


L'Oiseau de feu

by rei_c



Series: The Four Quartets [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Azazel's Special Children, Fae & Fairies, Ghosts, M/M, Psychological Horror, Sam Winchester's Demonic Powers, Sam Winchester's Visions, Visions, жар-птица | Firebird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-14
Updated: 2007-07-14
Packaged: 2018-07-10 20:57:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 64,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7006525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/pseuds/rei_c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The demon makes a deal with Sam and Dean: one mystical creature in exchange for their father. The ensuing quest might take some time, but Winchesters never give up, no matter how tough things get.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

When Melanie Collins opens her door, it’s a Thursday morning, it’s raining outside, and she has the flu. At least, she assumes she has the flu—it might be late July but her head is aching and her body hurts, her nose is running and just this side of bloody, and her ears feel as if they’re stuffed with cotton. It’s not a pleasant feeling. 

The two guys standing outside—one of them tall, wearing an unzipped hoodie over a worn-in t-shirt, shaggy hair and tan, one of them slightly shorter, looks almost military apart from how pretty he is, even with stubble covering his cheeks and chin—turn when she asks, “Can I help you?” She’s cursing the way she sounds, because she’d take either of these guys home to her parents in a heartbeat and she knows her voice is catching on a dry, raspy throat. Cough drops—she needs to remember to get cough drops when she goes to the drugstore later.

“I’m Sam, and this is Dean,” the taller one says. His eyes are kind, but sad. “How are you feeling, Melanie?” 

Melanie frowns, bites the skin around her nails, bad habit she’s never managed to break, says, “Do I know you?” She doesn’t think either of them are in any of her classes, doesn’t remember them from home, and she’s starting to feel like maybe she shouldn’t have answered her door. Maybe she should have stayed in bed. 

She can’t, though, not with essays due next week, work tomorrow, those damned dreams. Everything she has to do is going to take twice as long now that she’s getting sick, three times as long because she hasn’t been sleeping. Maybe that’s why she’s ill; she’s heard insomnia runs the body down, opens a person up to catching all sorts of things. She should add orange juice to the list, maybe some Gatorade, stock up on vitamins. She tells herself to write out a list before she leaves her apartment; her memory’s been getting a little foggy lately, except when it comes to the dreams.

Dean, the shorter one—shorter even though he must be over six feet tall—says, “No, I don’t think so. But you are Melanie?” 

Before she can answer, Dean looks at Sam, and she thinks he was asking _him_ , not her, which is weird, which gets even weirder when Sam nods. 

“Can we talk to you?” Sam asks. Melanie steps back, getting ready to shut the door and bolt every single lock, but then Sam says, “It isn’t the flu, and the dreams won’t go away.” 

Melanie’s blood runs cold. 

\--

She makes them coffee, watches as they take in the small, run-down apartment with eyes that seem used to looking for what’s been hidden. It’s not a fancy place, but it’s hers, and she thinks it’s cozy, most of the time. Not so much lately, hearing noises all night long, seeing strange people walking outside every once in a while, but these two don’t seem like they’re part of that problem. She’s not sure why, but she feels like she can trust them. She feels like she can tell Sam anything and he’ll listen, like he cares about every little detail and sincerely wants to know.

It unnerves her. 

“So, talk,” she says, once they’re both sipping, large hands practically cradling her chipped and worn-away mugs. Blue and green—they don’t match but she liked the handles, the ones her fingers slide around in but theirs hardly fit into. “What do you mean, I don’t have the flu, and how do you know about my dreams?” 

They exchange looks and Melanie’s not surprised when Sam’s the one that answers. “You’ve been having dreams about a yellow-eyed man. He’s been telling you things. The flu, the way you’re feeling, he warned you about that, too, didn’t he. Said it was the precursor for something, for a way that you’ll change. You’re starting to notice it, though you don’t want to.” 

He pauses, breathes deep, then goes on, says, quietly, “You haven’t needed to use your microwave lately, and last night you cooked a steak just by touching it and you didn’t want it charred like you normally do. You’ve thought about going back home to Olympia, but you think people would be afraid of what’s happening to you. _You’re_ afraid of what’s happening to you. You think you’re losing your mind.” 

Melanie’s staring at Sam like he’s crazy, but she can’t help it. She whispers, “How could you know that?” like she believes him completely. She does, it’s insane but she does, because he’s right. 

“Because I’ve met him before,” Sam says, and she glances at Dean. Dean hadn’t made a noise, but he’s tense now, as if he’s waiting for something, one hand moving to the inside of his jacket, and then Sam draws her attention back when he says, “The yellow-eyed man, I’ve talked to him as well. I’m like you. I can't do what you can, though. I have visions. I’ve been dreaming about you for a week.” 

\--

When they leave, she watches them go. Her head feels hollow, and she feels like, deep down inside, she’s missing something, like something has been ripped out of her. Sam left his number, told her to call him if she still had the dreams, if she ever saw something strange or wanted to talk to him for any reason at all. 

Once they’re gone, their car rumbling down the street, she pins the paper to her fridge, puts the aspirin and Kleenex away, and goes to take a shower. By the time she’s done, she can’t remember why on earth she was afraid to get back into bed and she decides that the essays can wait until she’s cleaned the house, top to bottom, and thrown out some odd drawings, sketches, of men with yellow eyes, that her little sister must have left on her last visit.

\--.--.--

You wake up, blink and rub your eyes. Dean’s sitting up in his bed, watching you, already dressed, and when you look at the clock you see that you’ve slept twelve hours. It explains why you feel so tired. 

Dean raises an eyebrow, pulls out a map. 

“William Carvey, outside of Jersey City, Grace Durbin, in Dallas, and David Pauley. I think he’s somewhere in Wyoming, but I’m not sure,” you say, swinging your feet off the bed, padding over for the cup of cold coffee sitting on the long, low dresser. 

Fire burns in your mind, low and crackling.

“ _Three_?” Dean asks. You can’t blame his tone; every night before this there’s been one person, never two, and the fact that you dreamt of three last night, in three different places, may signal an unwelcome change. Change, you’ve come to realise, is never good. “Okay, which one is the most dangerous?” 

You think, finally reply, “We should head east, I think. South as well, if any new ones come up.” If Dean asks, you won’t be able to explain why, but there’s something or someone waiting and as much as you’d like to ignore that vision when it comes, you know you won’t be able to. You know it will be bad.

You can’t hide from the visions, not for long, even with everything you’ve tried. It takes extravagant measures that need to be constantly renewed, measures that leave you feeling drained, empty to the core, missing something that makes you who and what you are. Sometimes you resent the ones you help. Sometimes you feel relieved that you’re still capable of envy.

“We’ll head to Wyoming first, then, and Dallas after,” Dean says. “Grace Durbin. She cute?”

\--.--.--

They can’t do anything about Chrissie Morgan except kill her. It’s not a realisation Dean likes, especially with the way Sam’s sitting next to him in the Impala, silent and pale, as if he’s the one under the death sentence instead of that bitch. ‘Course, come to think of it, Sam’s been acting that way since they hit the Florida state line. Dean doesn’t like it, wonders what Sam’s seen and how long Sam’s known that Chrissie’s beyond help.

They’d done what they came to do but she was too far gone, already controlled by the yellow-eyed bastard and enjoying it, and when she figured out what Sam had done, what she’d had ripped out of her, she’d gone crazy, lost it completely. 

Then her eyes went black. 

Dean was quick with the Holy Water and Sam with the Latin. The demon had fled from her body without hanging around for a fight, but Chrissie had attacked them with teeth and nails, hair flying everywhere, and as much as Dean doesn’t like to hit a girl, he’d fought back just as much. 

Sam had finally done something, Dean’s still not sure what, exactly, and Chrissie had stopped, had stepped back and stared at Sam for a long moment before she turned tail and ran. They’d chased her, but she’d lost them in the unfamiliar back alleys of Miami. 

“I can find her,” Sam had said, standing there, lit by streetlights and neon. 

“Then we’ll kill her,” Dean had said back. Sam hadn’t argued. 

They’ve been tracking her for three days as she moves, constantly, and Sam’s looking worn-out, run-down, other things that have Dean more worried for his little brother than normal. 

\--

When they find her, Dean expects to shoot her, once in the head or heart, over quickly, salt, burn, move on. Sam gets to her before he does, though, and even as he’s thinking that Sam’s going to waste his time trying to talk to her, even as he’s seeing his little brother pull out a knife, he thinks that he’s going to end up having to shoot her. 

Hearing her gurgled scream, seeing the blood drip down her chest, pour out of her throat, he still doesn’t believe it. He still thinks he’ll be the one to do it. 

\--

Sam spends an hour in the shower that night. Dean knows he’s wasting his time. The smell never leaves.

\--.--.--

Psychic after psychic, child after child, demon-possessed human after demon-possessed human. If they can’t help them, they kill them. That’s their only prey, for a year and a million miles back and forth the country: no ghosts, no werewolves, no poltergeists, no spirits, nothing else. 

You’d love to kill the older one for it, for hunting your children, the special ones you’ve cultivated over the years, for sending other demons back to hell, kill the older one and take possession of the younger, the one that belongs to you. But you don’t. You let them carry on, because they might be following the dreams of a seer, but you have a seer as well, and for every one they help or kill, your seer has been trained and she finds more, dozens more. They can’t be in more than one place at a time, but you can. You are.

It turns into a race, one you’re winning, but the margin’s growing closer and closer. They’ll need to be distracted, those damned Winchesters, and so you leave your circle of Hell one day and travel to Earth, to your own, special seer. 

“Let them find you,” you whisper, and Ava trembles with her eyes closed as you stroke her cheek, reach down and use your nails to carve your mark into her collarbone, jagged nails leaving a jagged line of corruption on her skin. As she bleeds, you smile and say it again. 

“Let them find you, darling.”

\--.--.--

Sam wakes up one morning, look in his eyes that means a new target, and says, “Ava. It was Ava.” 


	2. Première Partie

The house doesn’t look like much but the demon’s waiting for them inside. Sam knows this because he had a vision an hour ago, and they were this close because he’s been having dreams about this moment for a week. The demon’s in the house and so is Ava, propped up in a chair like a life-size doll, bruised and beaten, half-dead but alive. 

“Stick to the plan, Sammy,” Dean mutters right beside him. They’ve been staring at the building for close to ten minutes now, haven’t moved an inch except to breathe. 

Nothing’s changed in the house, either, and Sam’s ready to charge inside, to hell with the plan, but he’s still crouched here, ignoring the pins and needles in his calves, so he grunts, doesn’t dignify the reminder with an answer, and tightens his grip on his knife. They don’t have the Colt so they’re going in with their normal weapons, blessed and sanctified by half a dozen priests. 

They know the odds of both of them making it out alive, much less unharmed, are so small as to be nonexistent no matter how good the plan. Fool’s errand, Bobby had called it, when they stopped by to see him, to let him know what was going on. Ellen had unknowingly agreed, voice crackling over telephone wires. Still, she did admit that Winchesters are the biggest fools on the planet, so maybe, just maybe, things might go differently from what everyone expects and if they don’t, if she doesn’t hear anything from them inside of a week, she’ll buy a round in their honour. 

Sam’s not holding out hope, and he knows Dean isn’t either, but neither of them are ready to die, exactly, and they have a few tricks up their sleeves. Winchester men might be fools, but Sam and Dean, they can be damn lucky when it counts. They’re still alive, after all, and neither of them thought _that_ would happen.

Dean goes in first, like always, and Sam’s tapped into his gift, using his visions to give him a continual five-second heads-up. It takes a lot out of him, doing this will give him a migraine that lasts for days and a stomach that rejects any and all food for even longer, always does, but it’s a price he’s willing to pay if it means saving Ava. 

They make it up the steps, to the back bedroom, and the demon’s there, ink-black cloud, circling around Ava’s head. She looks half-conscious, eyes glazed over, and doesn’t make a noise when she sees them, as if she doesn’t register their presence. 

“Glad you could make it, boys,” the demon says. It still looks like a cloud, dark and foreboding, and Sam’s not sure how it’s talking, but with Ava there and Dean next to him, he doesn’t really care about the mechanics, just getting out of this house. “I’ve got a few things I’ve wanted to say to you both,” and it turns its gaze on Sam. “But you, Sam. Sam, Sam, Sam. One of my own, and you’ve been causing me nothing but trouble these days. Why is that, hm? Can’t leave your brothers and sisters alone, can’t leave my kids alone. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have some kind of personal vendetta against me. Revenge and murder, not very Christian, is that? Tell me, Sammy, how’s that supposed to make me feel?” 

Sam glares, eyes narrowed and jaw clenched, says, “I’m not yours. Let Ava go.” 

The demon laughs, looks at Dean, and murmurs, “And Dean. Stubborn, stupid Dean. Still trying to save your brother, still in pain over losing your father. Killed anyone lately, Dean? Committed any sins? Because when you die, you’re _mine_.” 

“I’m not yours,” Dean says, stealing Sam’s words and giving them extra bite, teeth flashing in the darkness of the house. “I don’t care how many times you say it, but Sam’s not and I’m not, and I’m gonna find a way to get my father back. Winchesters don’t belong in hell.” 

“Winchesters,” Ava sings, eyes glassy and vacant. 

The tone goes right to Sam’s bones, chills him and has him swallowing, tightening the grip on his knife again. She sounds as if she’s been driven crazy, as if she’s seen unspeakable things, maybe even done them with her own hands. She sounds broken, lost without her spirit, her attitude. 

“That’s right, darling,” the demon says, and part of its cloud slides down Ava’s cheek, lingering near her mouth. “Winchesters. Tell them what we do with Winchesters, Ava.” 

Ava’s lips part as her head tilts to one side, pulls her neck away from the collar of her jacket. Sam sees a wound there, deep slice that peeks out from under her clothes, looks like it’s serious enough that it’s hit her collarbone, and jagged so it won’t heal. 

“Winchesters. Make them suffer, make them bleed. Keep them alive to play with them,” Ava sings, voice cracking like her lips. “Pretty, pretty toys to play with, and soon they’ll be ours.” 

“That’s right,” the demon says again, part of its cloud caressing Ava’s forehead. She closes her eyes. “That’s my good girl.” 

Sam’s ears ring and his throat goes dry. The demon laughs and asks, “Would you give yourself to me, Sam, to save her? A fair exchange, a seer for a seer, and she’ll be free to leave. I’ll even leave Dean untouched, so he can take her away.” 

“Sam’s not doing anything,” Dean says. Part of the plan, and Sam’s relieved. Looking at Ava, if he’d had his way, his voice, he might have done it. 

“Then why are you here?” the demon asks. “To rescue her? I’m touched, believe me, but just _how_ to do you plan to do that?” The demon splits apart, does something that Sam can feel in the back of his head. 

Nothing happens. 

“We can’t be possessed,” Sam says, and lifts up an amulet from under his shirt. “And you can’t do anything to us. No tricks, no slamming us against walls, no claws, nothing.” He pushes up his sleeves, ignores the bruises from the poltergeist three nights ago and shows the demon the runes inked all over his arms, back and front. Sam doesn’t know what all of the runes mean, the signs and sigils, but he knows they work and knows they’re worth the six hours it takes Dean to draw them on. 

The demon sighs. “A stand-off. How boring. But the girl’s mine,” it adds, and Ava shudders under its touch, opens her eyes and stares right at Sam. He can see something like clarity in the back of her eyes. “She doesn’t have your protections.” 

Dean lifts his gun, aims it at Ava, points and shoots, and she grimaces in pain when a bullet rips through her right shoulder. Sam flinches at the noise, then flinches when Dean shoots her again, in the other shoulder. He turns away, just for a second, when Ava doesn’t do more than scrunch her nose. She should be screaming in pain, and the silence in the house, the stillness, drives apprehension and fear like ice into Sam’s belly. 

The demon hisses, backs away, and grows bigger, darker, when Sam says, “Holy water, pieces of the Eucharist, salt, rosemary, and sage. You’re bigger than the little tricks, but not when they’re combined and blessed.” He pauses, lets his eyes flick over the wounds running ragged blood, and when he adds, “She’s not yours anymore,” he can’t help the vicious triumph twinned with vicious sorrow. 

“They’ll fade over time and I’ll get her back,” the demon says, as if it hasn’t just lost a seer, as if Ava means nothing to him, as if Dean shooting her means nothing. “So she’s open game now, and none of us have anything to bargain with. Why are you still here?” 

“We want our father back,” Dean says. Sam stops breathing—this is the most tenuous of their part of their meeting, the most dangerous, and none of his visions have shown him what happens past this point, so he lets them go, holds his ground and doesn’t stagger as the pain of using his gift slams into him. Ava blinks, slowly.

The demon looks at Dean, then says, taking time as if it’s savouring the words, “I’m no crossroads demon, but I’ll offer you a deal, Dean Winchester. Bring me. Hmm. Bring me a firebird, and I'll let your father go,” before it disappears, fading away through the windowpanes. 

Sam looks at Dean, who says, “You heard the son of a bitch. We find him his damn firebird,” with a mulish expression on his face. 

And that's the end of that. 

Or, rather, that’s the beginning.

\--.--.--

L’Oiseau de feu   
_pour_ Gisela

“ _To be redeemed from fire by fire_ ”

 

\--.--.--

They bundle Ava up, handle her like she’s spun glass, staunch the bleeding but leave the bullets in, and take her to Missouri, who clucks her tongue the second she sees the girl. 

“Oh, baby,” she sighs, and peels Ava out of Sam’s grasp. “Oh, sweetie, what that thing did to you. But you’ll be all right now, you come in here and Missouri’ll take care of you. Come on in, boys,” she adds, almost as an afterthought. “You two find your way to the kitchen and I’ll be back down once I get missy here settled. And Dean, don’t you even think about snatching up any of those cookies, y’hear?” 

Sam watches as Missouri takes Ava upstairs, listens as Missouri keeps up a steady stream of meaningless chatter. He lets his eyes wander over Ava’s body, cataloguing the injuries underneath her clothes, familiar to him after three days of driving, of sleeping in motel beds with her and waking up to her screams, of sharing visions and nightmares with her, of holding her while she cried and sobbed and shook. 

The demon wasn’t kind to her, not before it broke her and certainly not after. To think of her being in its clutches for so long, to think of all he and Dean did instead of trying to find her sooner, it makes him feel like less of a person. He and Dean haven’t been that kind to her, either, shooting her twice, and driving her halfway across the country, but he keeps reminding himself that their actions were a form of kindness. 

Dean elbows him hard in the side, bone sliding between ribs and into skin that’s much too thin after three days of Ava, three days of dealing with the aftermath of using his gift purposefully. 

“Come on, Sam,” Dean says, heading for the kitchen without another glance at the stairs. “Missouri said the kitchen, and if we aren’t there by the time she gets back down here, it’s not gonna be my fault. I love her cookies,” he adds, already disappearing through the doorway at the end of the hall.

Sam swallows at the idea of food, feeling his stomach churn, and follows his brother. 

\--

He has his head on the table and a glass of water near one hand when Missouri comes back down. She doesn’t touch him, learned that lesson a long time ago, but she taps her fingers on the back of his chair and waits for him to look up before she starts talking and bustling around, pulling out Tupperware containers of leftovers from the fridge. 

“You boys don’t have a lick of sense between the two of you, you know that?” she says, rhetorical question, conversational tone. “Waltzing right on in to that house, taking up that demon’s invitation easy-as-you-please, no sir.” 

“We didn’t exactly have a choice, Missouri,” Dean says. “Besides, we got Ava and we made a bargain with it.” 

Missouri turns, looks at them both like she’s not sure what Dean means. 

Sam sighs, says, “We need to find a firebird and bring it to the demon.” 

“And why would you two wanna do that?” she asks. “You’ve been doing everything you can to swipe that demon off its feet, and now you’re running errands for it? ‘Sides, last I heard, making deals with demons isn’t the safest thing in the book, not unless you’ve spent some serious time thinking about it first.” 

Dean looks at Sam, who shrugs and puts his head back down, feeling his temples start to pound again. The headache’s not as bad, not as intense, and it’s not cycling through the downtime as quickly, but it hurts, makes his vision go blurry until he’s seeing three times the vague outline of things. 

“We’ve thought, Missouri,” Dean says, almost like a challenge, just on the border of being one. “We get the firebird, we get our dad back.” 

Silence. 

\--

Missouri pours a cup of tea down Sam’s throat, says it’ll help with his headache and his stomach-ache both, but he’s throwing up a few minutes later, Dean right behind him, rubbing his back. When Sam finally sits up from the toilet, wipes his mouth off on his arm, Dean helps him stand, drags him to a bed, and pushes him down. 

Sam falls asleep and the imprint of Dean’s worried look follows him into his dreams. 

\--

He wakes up, doesn’t understand why his yells sound more like high-pitched screams, not until he remembers. “Ava,” he whispers, and gets out of bed, stumbles to her room. 

Both Dean and Missouri are inside, trying to help her, and he’s not upset they left him alone, not when he’s fine, not when he knows what Ava was seeing in her dreams, not when he sees the look in her eyes. Dean’s trying to hold her down without hurting her and Missouri’s trying to give her something, herbs or medicine, Sam’s not sure, but he can see that it’s not doing any good. 

Sam sits on the edge of her bed, touches her, and Ava calms, though her eyes are still covered with a thin film of fear. She’s wearing a tank top; Sam can see the scars covering thin arms, the yellowing bruises all over her sallow skin, the gunshot wounds, the jagged cut that mirrors the arch of her collarbone and isn’t healing. 

“Sshh,” he whispers, and wraps an arm around her shoulders, lays down and pulls her with him. “Sshh, Ava. I know.” 

She quiets, turns into him. He feels wet tears against his shoulder a moment later. 

“Yellow eyes,” she sobs into his skin. “Yellow eyes, he’s coming, he’s always coming, and he’ll kill us all, use us and kill us, playthings for his army, use us and kill us, kill everyone.” 

Sam hears Missouri say something in a low voice to Dean, too low for Sam to decipher the words, so he smoothes Ava’s hair, hand cupping her skull and laying light touches on her scalp. She trembles in his arms, heart beating too fast to be healthy. 

“Sshh, Ava. You’re safe now. You’re safe.” 

Missouri leaves, echo of her footsteps rumbling up through the bedposts, and Ava’s asleep in Sam’s arms, her breathing lulling him back under, when Sam feels the covers being drawn up over them. 

“Dean,” Sam whispers. Ava shifts against him, a familiar weight, her cold feet settling between his legs, her breasts brushing against his chest. 

“Get some sleep,” Dean says, and turns the light off as he leaves. 

\--

“There’s a woman,” Missouri says. 

Dean’s taking a break from cleaning the Impala—was up at the break of dawn with circles under his eyes and he placed a light touch on Sam’s shoulder as he came in to wash up for lunch, now scrubbing his hands in the sink, picking grease out from under his nails. 

Sam’s drinking a glass of lime-spiked water, slouching in his chair at the table, mind too full of aches and dreams to be of any use, not this soon after waking up. He feels heavy, as if his arms and legs have weights strapped to them, like someone’s squeezing his skull, but it’s better than the days before, not as useless, as all-consuming. 

“She’s over off South Carolina, some island ‘round the channels,” Missouri goes on, not looking at either of the Winchesters; her eyes are focused on the vegetables she’s chopping up and her voice is warm but lacking inflection. “Rumour has it she’s got some _gamayun_ blood in her.” 

Dean looks at Sam and Sam scrunches up his face, trying to pull the meaning of the word out from the back of his mind. He’s heard it before but can’t remember the context, not until Missouri glances at him on her way to rinse her knife off, elbowing Dean away from the sink. The look in her eyes, hooded, he remembers that from last year, going to see her after he found out about the demon, its plans for the children, for him in particular. 

“ _Gamayun_ ,” he says, slowly, word lingering on his tongue. “The prophet, right? Russian or Slavic, something like that?”

“You said the demon wanted a firebird,” she says, looking at Dean now, waiting for him to nod. When he does, she says, “It’ll help to know the culture and context. Whether he’s talking about a phoenix or the Russian kind or what-have-you, she’ll be able to help, set you on your way, so long as you don’t tick her off first.” 

They’ve been waiting two years to try and find a way to free their father, and now, with the answer so close, Sam knows Dean won’t hold off a minute longer than he’s forced to. Judging by the way Dean’s looking at him, his older brother is ready to pack up and leave for the coast right now, and the only thing keeping Dean here is Sam. 

The only thing keeping Sam here is Ava. 

He looks between Dean and Missouri, both of them now unabashedly watching him, and slumps a bit more, letting his shoulders droop, feeling the pull of muscle. “Missouri,” he says, slow, and when she looks as if she might interrupt, Dean reaches out and touches her arm, waits for her to look at him and then shakes his head. “Missouri, there’s a way to keep Ava from having the visions.” 

She stares at him, looks almost horrified. “Samuel Winchester, don’t tell me.”

“Not unless I have to,” Sam says, cutting her off. “They don’t hurt more when they come back, or knock me out, and they don’t get more intense to make up for it. But blocking that part off, it makes everything else feel less, somehow.” 

“Less what?” she asks, and Dean plucks the knife out of her hand before she loses her grip on it completely. 

“Just less,” Sam answers. He’s never been able to completely explain it to Dean, and as close as he and Dean have become over the past months, hunting the way they’ve been hunting, if Dean doesn’t wholly understand, no one else will. “I can do it for Ava and she won’t have to worry about the visions. But everything else’ll still be the same. It won’t help with,” and he trails off, because how can he talk about what the demon did to her? 

Missouri looks at him, looks at Dean, and finally says, slow, “Can you teach me? Or at least explain to me how it works?”

Sam looks at Dean, who says, just as slowly, “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” 

Missouri looks at him like she’s trying to find something and when she doesn’t, can’t, she turns to Sam. 

He can feel her pressing against his mind, searching, but the way he’s able to keep the visions blocked off, the way he’d be able to help Ava, it’s hidden behind a wall Missouri will never be able to break through. “Please stop,” he finally says, and gently pushes her out of his head. 

Missouri gives him a narrow-eyed look, nods. “I want to watch,” she says. 

Sam’s eyes slide to Dean, and they both nod. 

\--

Sam stands up, sways on his feet, and feels Dean right there, holding him upright. Ava’s asleep, and the frown lines on her forehead have smoothed out. She looks almost peaceful. If it wasn’t for the mottled colour of her skin, the way she’s lying in bed, too carefully, as if the pain of her body aching has followed her into sleep, he’d almost think she looks content. 

“You sure you don’t need to stay and rest?” Missouri asks, searching Sam’s face once the three of them get back into the hallway, giving Ava some quiet to sleep in. She looks worried, fingers twitching as if she wants to reach out and run her hands over his forehead, down his cheeks. “I felt that, sweetie, whatever it was.”

Sam smiles, pinched, tired lines, rubs one shoulder, and says, “I’ll sleep on the way there. Thanks, though, Missouri.” 

“Let me know if you need anything,” Missouri says. “I’m sure I’ll know when you finish it. Your father always did have one of the loudest minds I’ve ever met. Could hear that man clear across the country when he’d get going.” She shakes her head, clucks her tongue, and gives them a foil-wrapped package of chocolate-chip cookies and another of carrot sticks.

Dean nods, says thanks, and leads Sam to the Impala.

\--

The trip to the Atlantic takes just under twenty hours. Dean drives like a maniac when he’s behind the wheel, flying over state highways and county roads, doing thirty miles, sometimes forty, over the speed limit. They trade off driving and only stop once to catch a couple hours of sleep in the Impala at a rest stop an hour outside of South Carolina. By the time they’re smelling salt in the air, feeling the crush of waves in every puff of wind, Sam’s almost entirely recovered, both from the run-in with the demon and the way he blocked off Ava’s visions. 

Dean drives across a causeway onto Pawleys Island and parks in front of a general store right along the main drag. The store doesn’t look very general, the whole place looks grudgingly geared towards tourists, but this is where Missouri said to come, so here they are. 

Sam gets out of the Impala and looks around, eyes hidden behind red-tinted sunglasses. The people look ordinary, no one seems as if they might be descended from some kind of prophetic Russian bird, but then he hears a melody that doesn’t seem at all natural. He turns, sees a woman on the boardwalk staring at them, high Russian cheekbones, an elegant neck, tight ringlets of brown hair. There’s a bird on her shoulder, one that seems to be at home preening itself, and she tilts her head when Sam lifts up his shades and meets her eyes. 

“I know that’s not a parrot on her shoulder, but she looks a bit pirate-y to me,” Dean says, standing close enough to Sam that he can murmur and both of them know no one else can listen in. “Or maybe pirate wench. What do you think?” 

Sam grins, whispers back, “Wife of the captain, maybe,” and when the woman nods at them, movement regal, Sam looks at Dean and raises an eyebrow. 

Dean holds his hands up, clear sign that Sam’s won this one, and then crosses the street to go talk to the woman. Sam rolls his eyes, jogs to catch up.

\--

“We’re looking for someone,” Dean says, checking the woman out, eyes tracing the curve of small, high breasts under a tight t-shirt, the slide of hips under a long, plain skirt as she shifts from one foot to the other.

Sam’s almost irreverently pleased when she grins widely and says, with a clear southern accent, “Ain’t everyone?” Dean doesn’t blush, ever, but he manages the awkward look well, and she takes pity on him, says, “Aw, sugar, don’t you go worrying. I know what you mean, and I know you mean well. One of your friends told you ‘bout me, and I can’t say I mind, not with what you’re aiming to do.” 

Dean looks at Sam, then back at the woman, asks, “You’ll help us?” 

She looks past them, out at the water, and Sam shivers as he feels something, some kind of vibe she’s giving off, float out across the ocean. She turns back to them, lays an assessing gaze on Sam, and tells him, not Dean, “Know what, sugar? I think I just might be able to,” as if she’s only decided this minute.

\--

She takes them back to an upscale cottage along the water, the interior done up in blues and yellows, for a meal she calls luncheon. The place is calming, but there’s something off about it to Sam, who steps lightly when he’s inside, eyes taking note of everything. She catches him at it, laughs, and says, “There ain’t nothing wrong with the spells ‘round here.” 

Dean stiffens, looks at Sam immediately, but Sam’s relaxing. He’s caught sight of a knot pattern on one of the throw rugs, something that no one would have any reason to notice, as if it was just happenstance that the rags ended up that way, but he’s used that same kind of pattern to dull his visions before, used Sharpies to draw them on his eyelids and forehead. When Dean follows Sam’s gaze, he stands down as well, having drawn the same pattern and its variations along the line of Sam’s spine. 

The bird flies off of the woman’s shoulders and settles on a perch near the window, watches all three of them, shaking its feathers. 

“Don’t pay ‘im no mind,” she says. “Now, you boys’re hungry, so come on in the kitchen and I’ll fix you up something to tide you over on your way.” 

“On our way?” Dean asks. 

She turns, gives Dean a crooked smile, and says, “On your way to Baba Yaga, o’ course. Y’ain’t gonna be staying here very long, Dean Winchester, not with the kind of hurry y’all’re in.” 

\--

Her name’s Rose, and her great-grandparents came to the Carolinas via France and the Lausanne Internationale. The bloodline’s very definitely Russian, though no one would ever be able to tell with her accent and how well she fits in with sun, sand, and surf. Sam asks her about that across a kitchen table that’s creaking under the weight of food she’s piled on it. 

“ _Gamayuns_ live on islands in the east,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes, tossing a chunk of cold ham at the bird, which catches the food with a snap of its beak. “This here’s an island, and it’s hard to get any more east and still be in the country, ‘m I right?” 

Dean snorts, and Rose looks at him with an approving eye before she turns her attention back to Sam, lets the smile fade into something more serious, more inquisitive. “Y’ever felt at home somewhere, Sam? Felt like you could just fade into the way it wraps around you, like it’s a place you’ve been missing all your life, until you find it, and, when you do, something just snaps into place?” 

Sam studies her, can feel Dean watching him, and finally says, “You’re the seer, Rose. Have I?” 

Rose grins, shows off her teeth, and says, “The way you feel ‘bout that place, that’s the way I feel here. Don’t fit the blood nor the gift, but this island, sugar, it’s good ‘nough for me. Grew up down here; ain’t no way I’m gonna go any further north than this, no sir.” 

Dean’s still watching Sam, and he looks like he’s going to open his mouth, but Rose speaks quietly, eyes on her hands as she butters another piece of bread and says, “Better not be asking, Dean. Not unless you sure you can take the answer, whatever it is,” half-warning, half-advice. 

Sam looks down, moves cold green bean salad around his plate, and doesn’t look at his brother.

\--

“Where are we supposed to go, then?” Dean asks, once they’ve made a sizeable dent in the food and done the dishes under Rose’s close supervision. “Where’s Baba Yaga?” 

Rose is perched on the sofa, lemon-coloured and soft, and Sam’s staring out of the window, watching the sun’s reflection in the water, studying red-flecked waves and ignoring the way that Rose’s bird stares at him. He can see Dean’s reflection in the window, can see Dean leaning against one of the doorways, out of place with his leather jacket and boots in this woman’s house. 

“What d’you boys know about the ol’ crone?” 

Sam sees Dean’s reflection turn, look at him, and he starts to speak almost automatically, though the crash of waves, real or imagined, he’s not sure, echoes in his ears. “She lives in a hut with chicken legs in the woods,” he says. “She has a silver birch broom she uses to sweep away all traces of herself, and she has three horses and invisible servants. She doesn’t like questions but she’ll help as often as harm, and she embodies the aspects of nature, death and rebirth, wisdom and innocence, good and evil.” 

Rose hums, and asks, “You’ll be taking her a present of blue roses as well, won’t you?” 

“Blue roses,” Dean says, and Sam turns at his brother’s tone, the flat disbelief. “Rose, there’s no such thing.” 

She smiles, looks at him, and says, “Now, don’t go saying that, sugar. You saw a blue rose in the midst of your panic and felt relief.” 

Dean gives her a blank look, but that wound has just been reopened for Sam. “When I met Ava,” he says. Dean’s head turns slow, but Sam can feel the weight of his brother’s eyes settle on him. “It was at the Blue Rose Motel. That’s where we were when Gordon.” 

Dean’s eyes flicker, as if he’s trying to pull the memory out, and when he does, he looks at Rose again, says, “It’s not like we can take her the whole freaking motel, Rose. So we’re back at square one. There aren’t any blue roses, not unless they’re fake, and I have a feeling Baba Yaga wouldn’t appreciate fake flowers.” 

“We’ll find a way,” Sam says, looking at Rose, who’s looking back at him. He gets the vaguest impression from her of a flower shop, some place in Lafayette, a woman with a bouquet in her hands, the two Winchesters walking inside, before her eyes widen and she stands up, unsteady, staring at him. 

Sam looks away, back out the window, muscles tense, shoulders aching in the salt-laden air. Rose’s bird is leaning forward and studying him, as if Sam’s magnetic, a curious specimen. His skin crawls at the feeling.

“She lives in the woods,” Rose says, addressing Dean, though her eyes are still fixed on Sam. “Of course, she isn’t _the_ Baba Yaga, because that one’s still over in Russia somewhere, maybe in one of them old Eastern bloc countries, where it still gets a li’l too cold, sometimes, to explain. No, this one’s not the one of legend, but she’s connected, they all are. She’ll do for what you boys need. Just off the Hoh River, you’ll find it when you get out that way.” 

Dean starts to thank her, but she stops him mid-sentence, says, “Don’t you worry ‘bout it,” and pushes them out the front door, Dean first, then Sam. As she’s closing the door, Rose says, soft and quiet, “It’ll get better, sugar, I swear it. Just you keep at it, and it’ll come in handy someday down the line.” 

Sam smiles at her, his eyes focused on the bridge of her nose, and nods once, leaves, and feels two sets of eyes on his neck. 

\--

They walk back to the Impala, Dean grinning wide at the girls flouncing around in their bikinis and wraps, rich money and no sense. They grin back, of course, and Dean looks at them over his shoulder, watching hip-sways and ass-shakes, shaking his head. 

Sam knows the expression on Dean’s face, wonders how many of those girls might’ve been going for a ride later, if it wasn’t Dean and if it wasn’t their father on the line. They’ve got to drive clear across the country to find Baba Yaga and there’s no guarantee that she’ll help them once they get there. They won’t find out either way until they talk to her. 

“Lafayette,” Sam says, once they’re both in the car, across the causeway, sound of the ocean starting to recede behind them just like the horizon, the smell of salt and the wide-open feel of Rose’s condo. 

“What about it?” Dean asks, one hand on the wheel, the other flipping through a box of cassettes while they’re waiting at a stoplight. 

Sam thinks his brother’s searching for something appropriate, wonders what Dean’ll come up with. “Funny coincidence, actually. That’s where we’ll find the flowers,” he says, “or at least a way to find them,” and drums fingers on his knee, waiting. 

It doesn’t take long for Dean to catch what Sam’s said, to pause thumbing through the cassettes and turn in his seat, look at Sam. “How do you know that?” Dean asks, short, sharp, staccato words, brisk question. “Your visions don’t,” he says, stops.

Sam can hear fear swimming underneath Dean’s words, and his reply isn’t exactly meant to calm his brother. “I saw it in Rose’s eyes,” he says. 

Dean keeps looking at him, one second, two, seven, then swears under his breath, picks out _The Black Album_ , and flips off the guy behind them for honking as the light turns green. “When you say you _saw_ it,” Dean says. 

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Sam says, cutting Dean off. “I wasn’t trying, I wasn’t pushing. It was just there. Dean.” 

Dean picks up on the unspoken question, shakes his head. “I don’t know, Sam.”

\--

Summer in Indiana’s supposed to be hot, corn more than knee-high and turning brown in liquid air, the drone of mosquitoes and smell of spilled Coke and popcorn at a Friday night game, basketball or baseball or football, it doesn’t matter. When Dean drives into Lafayette, Sam’s sitting in the passenger seat, staring out of the window. Cold and rainy, tornadoes in the way the clouds are moving, too fast, not straight enough, and the chill of water burns on its way through Sam’s shoulders, just like vision-dreams burn through his mind every time he closes his eyes and drifts off. 

“Sleep tonight, flower shop tomorrow?” Dean asks. 

Sam knows he hasn’t been hiding the dreams as well as he would’ve liked, not if Dean’s willing to wait, offering up a motel. “We should go out first,” he says, looking through raindrops on the window to watch the play of light from the strip malls and car dealerships. “See if we can hustle up some money. Summer session’s still going,” and Sam wonders if Dean remembers that this is a college town, if that’s why he’s been quiet and withdrawn on the drive up here, or if Sam’s finally starting to scare Dean past family ties. 

Dean nods, hums, turns and gets a room at a different motel than the ones they’ve stayed at before, then takes Sam to a worn-down bar with buckets of peanuts on every table. Sam sits at the bar, chats with the girl behind it, who’s spinning bottles of whisky and bourbon, while Dean plays pool for twenties. It’s not hustling, not the way they were taught, more low-key, and Sam knows it means that Dean’s not willing to give the game the attention a good hustle would need, isn’t willing to deal with any potential fall-out. 

“That your brother?” the girl finally asks, wiping off her hands on her jeans, black and worn, dusty with peanut shells. “He’s gorgeous.” 

Sam grins, looks down at his beer, says, “Don’t say that to his face, okay? He’ll be insufferable for days, preening at the same time he’s listening to his mullet rock louder than normal.”

She sighs, eyes twinkling, says something about the creation and conceptions of masculinity that has Sam raising an eyebrow. “Gender studies,” she says, teeth gleaming in the low light, smile wide and friendly like most people in the state and outside of the bigger cities, Midwest small-town friendly openness. “Explains why I’m bartending, doesn’t it?”

“I know how it goes,” Sam says, and they talk about professors and course loads and juggling school and work until Dean saunters over, flashes the girl a smile, asks for a couple shots of Jack. 

\--

The screams wake him up. 

Sam sits up, opens his eyes, but the screaming doesn’t stop, so he knows it wasn’t him, and Ava’s still in Lawrence with Missouri. He looks around, doesn’t see Dean, does see the door to their room open and waving in the wind, raindrops soaking the carpet. He swings his feet off the bed, right into his shoes, and is distantly relieved he never got undressed before falling asleep because it means he can head for the door and parking lot in the next second. 

He sees Dean running towards the screams, knows Dean didn’t pick up a weapon, not with the way Dean’s moving, quick and careful stalking. Sam goes back to the room, grabs his favourite knife and Dean’s gun from the bathroom counter, tucking the knife away and holding the gun low, clicking the safety off as he heads in the direction his brother ran.

Sam runs around a building, stops suddenly and sways forward, body still wanting to move, not allowed to do more than put the safety back on and shove the gun next to the knife. Dean’s got some guy in a choke-hold and there’s a girl, a woman, hunched over and shivering against the wall. Dean lets the guy go, pushes him to the ground and kicks him low in his abdomen; he’s got things under control, so Sam goes over to the woman, hands open and spread wide, looking at her with puppy-dog eyes through his bangs. 

“Hey, there,” he says, soft and coaxing. “What happened?” 

She shakes her head, but Sam can see the bruises on her neck, her split lip, and as the sound of cracking bone rings out on the asphalt behind him, a clump of hair flutters under the streetlamps. 

Sam feels something primal rip through him, something that slivers inside of his stomach and coils higher to his throat, ready to be spoken, let free. He bites it back, steps closer to the woman, shy steps, carefully says, “My name’s Sam. I’m Sam, and that’s Dean, he’s my brother. Will you come with me somewhere warm, out of the rain?” 

She shudders, flinches back from his touch, and he lets her, moves backwards until he thinks she’s okay with how close he is. “I’m sorry,” she gasps, shaking her head. “I’m sorry, I’m, he wasn’t,” and stops when Sam reaches out one hand. 

“You don’t have to apologise,” he says, and something in what he’s said, maybe the tone, has her looking at him for the first time. There’s no noise behind them anymore, so Sam speaks more quietly, says, “Don’t apologise, there’s nothing to be sorry for. The motel lobby’s open. We can have someone call the cops, or there’s a Steak ‘n Shake across the street. Will you let me get you a cup of coffee or soup, something warm?” 

“Probably needs a shot or eight,” Dean mutters behind him, but doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t move any closer. Sam looks, sees Dean kneeling next to the guy, who’s unconscious or dead, bloody and bruised, and hides the satisfaction quickly when the girl hiccups. 

Sam tilts his head, and she takes his hand, hesitant, but he can’t blame her, not at all. 

\--

“Not all monsters are supernatural,” Dean says, once they’re back in their room, lying on their beds, staring at the ceiling and watching rain leak in from one corner of the roof, just enough light from the streetlamps outside coming in through thin curtains to illuminate each drop. 

Sam thinks of the girl, sitting in the motel lobby, paisley comforter wrapped around her shoulders, holding a cup of coffee and staring at the floor. He thinks of Ava, feels his muscles pulse, and says, “Dad’s first lesson.” 

There’s silence for a few minutes, no noise except for the sound of cars outside, splashing through puddles, rain on the windows, the plip-plop of their leaky roof, but then Dean says, “We’ll get him back, Sam. We will.” 

A rumble of distant thunder, ominous, as if it should be a sign of something coming for them. “I know,” Sam says, finally. “I know we will.” 

\--

Sam goes through the phonebook in the morning when the storm’s passed and the rain’s turned into humidity, droplets clinging to his skin. The open door doesn’t help; all hints of last night’s wind and the early morning breeze have disappeared. There are seventeen florists in the city, not counting grocery stores, and it would’ve helped if Sam had seen a name in Rose’s eyes. 

He did see a storefront, though, so he takes the phonebook, a city map, and directs Dean to five before he lifts his eyes and sees the sixth, McKinney’s Flowers, right in front of him. It’s the same, down to the woman leaving, arms full of butcher block paper, stems sticking out of the bottom, petals gold and red peeking from the top. Sam feels shivers work their way up and down his spine, even after everything, at seeing his visions come true, and he lets Dean walk inside the shop first, doesn’t mind the gentle touch of Dean’s hand on his back when Sam passes him and smiles at the florist. 

“Weird question,” he says brightly, and is rewarded with a warm laugh. 

“Can’t be worse than some of the things my daughter asks me,” the woman says, grinning, and leans her elbows on the counter. “Seven and I swear she’s going on sixteen. What can I do for you?” 

Dean’s puttering around with something behind Sam, but he looks up and says, “We’re trying to find a specific kind of flower for our grandma.” 

The florist looks between them, quick eye flick as if she’s trying to pick out the family resemblance, though her attention’s back on Sam when Sam says, “See, she likes roses, and her favourite colour’s blue, and we heard,” trailing off. 

“Are there blue roses?” Dean asks, moving to stand next to Sam. “Her birthday’s next week, eighty, and we’d like to do something special, y’know, maybe splurge a little. None of us thought she’d make it this long.” 

“Blue roses,” the florist says, thoughtful, and says, “Usually we just stick some white roses in food colouring and water, that dyes them pretty quickly, but there’s a new variety, just been out a few years. A couple big companies did some genetic wrangling, ended up with a blue rose, but we don’t carry any here and I don’t think any of our suppliers would. You’d have to try a big city for that, and those roses are pricey with a capital ‘p.’ If you’re looking to spoil her a bit, though.” 

Sam flashes her a grin, asks, “Is there any way you could maybe point us in the right direction? I mean, would anyone in Indy have them, or are we talking Chicago, St. Louis, here?” 

The florist smiles, stands up and pats the counter. “You boys gimme five minutes, I’ll find someone for you. Sound good?” 

“We’d appreciate it,” Dean replies. 

She ducks in an office to one side, and Sam moves away from the counter, studies some of the pre-made bouquets stuck in refrigerators that make him think of grocery stores and cases of ice cream. There’s one with white roses and lilies, looks like old lace and that haunted hotel in Connecticut from a couple years ago, and the one next to it is in a red vase, filled with red roses and carnations. 

One at the end is mostly marigolds, yellow, red, and orange, looks like a sunrise, and Sam surprises himself when he says, “Did you know you can eat marigold leaves?” 

“No, because I sure as hell don’t,” Dean mutters, moves to Sam’s elbow. “Seriously, people eat flowers?” 

“They’re good in salads,” Sam says. “Jess used to grow them just to cook with,” and bites the skin around his nails, doesn’t say another word until the florist comes back out and gives them a list of specialty stores that stock blue roses. 

One of them is in Washington, just outside of Tacoma. 

\--

Their drive across the county takes about ten hours less than it should. Dean doesn’t want to stop, though Sam makes him, just once, just for three hours, barely enough sleep to make sure the caffeine in the next fast food drive-thru coffee kicks in. Sam feels strung out, spends the hours reading a handful of books he lifted from the library at Purdue, easy work cutting out the barcode tags and hiding the books in a backpack, waltzing right through the scanners while Dean flirted with the co-eds behind the desk just in case. 

The books are all about Russian myth, because if there’s one thing Sam knows, it’s that there’s no such thing as being too prepared. If there’s a second thing Sam knows, it’s that preparation is never enough. He has a feeling this is going to be more complicated than just tracking down a bird and grabbing it for the demon. 

“We need to purify ourselves,” Sam says, first words he’s spoken in two hundred miles. 

Dean jumps, looks over as he’s rubbing his eyes, yawning. They’re half an hour from the Washington state line. “Purify who, now?” 

Sam sighs, rubs his forehead, and reaches back for a bottle of aspirin they picked up two weeks ago, already half-gone. “Us, Dean. We need to purify ourselves. According to the legends, things go better if the person or people seeking Baba Yaga’s help are clean, in a manner of speaking.” 

Dean nods once, holds out one hand for some aspirin, swallows three of them dry when Sam tips pills into his palm. “Any of the books say how we’re supposed to do that?” 

“No,” Sam says. His skull is throbbing, and when he tilts his head back to choke down the aspirin with tepid coffee, he winces, feels muscles pull, neck and shoulders, feels the skin across his collarbone pulse. 

“Hey,” Dean says, looking over, frown on his face. “You okay? You don’t look good, Sam.” 

Sam swallows, coughs, feels something in his nose give. “Fuck,” he mutters, wiping his nostrils and seeing blood. “Not good.” 

Dean’s pulling the Impala over, letting the car coast to a stop on the shoulder, one hand on Sam’s arm. “Sam? What is it? Vision? Headache? Ghost? What? Come on, tell me what’s going on.”

“Vision,” Sam says, pushing the syllables through his teeth. “Or maybe something about Ava. Shit.” 

\--

He opens his eyes but can’t see. Sam panics, split-second terror, but then realises his eyes are covered by a hand, one that moves when Sam twitches his fingers. He pulls his palm away from his face, sees Dean looking at him, worried. 

“Nothing yet,” Sam says. He sits up, leans into the back of his seat and feels leather stick to the sweat on his neck. “They’re trying to track Ava down. We should call Missouri, let her know.” Sam reaches for the phone in his pocket, but Dean’s already got his out, is already holding the phone to his ear and merging back onto the state highway, the Impala’s engine rumbling as Dean accelerates. 

Sam closes his eyes, listens as Dean says, “Hey. Yeah, we’re almost in Washington. Mmhmm. Yeah, trying to track her. How? I dunno, hold on.” 

“They used Ava to find other psychics, just like I’ve been,” Sam says, answering Missouri’s question without needing to hear it from Dean. “But there’s something about psychics who can do that, like they’re some kind of central beacon. The demon could track Ava, Ava could track the others. I think it’s something about the way our gift works.” 

Dean’s quiet for a minute, then asks, “But her gift’s blocked, right? They can’t track her?” 

Sam doesn’t know if it’s Missouri asking or Dean, but he replies, “They’re figuring that out. They’ll push harder for a while longer, but once they realise, they’ll move on to locator spells or scrying.”

“You hear that?” Dean asks, and Missouri must say something, ask something, because Dean starts telling her about the _gamayun_ , about their stop in Lafayette, and Sam’s head roars, sleep crashing over him and dragging him under. 

“Hey, Sam, Missouri says you’re an idiot and I should dump you in the Pacific,” he hears, just on the verge of unconsciousness. 

Sam smiles, doesn’t answer, tumbles into dreams of yellow eyes and flames. 

\--

The florist here is definitely upscale; they drive past it first to check it out and see a mass of orchids and roses in one window, draped in a net of diamonds, and bird of paradise flowers in the other, vase a marvel of glass sculpture. 

“Fuck,” Dean says, raising an eyebrow and turning down the Black Sabbath cassette. “That’s.” 

He trails off, and Sam swallows, says, “I think maybe we’ll need to shower.” Sam looks at Dean, who shrugs, lifts up one arm and sniffs. When he winces, Sam laughs, says, “I’ll even let you go first. Just don’t complain about the suit, okay?” 

Dean turns wide eyes on Sam, Sam fixes a very firm gaze on his older brother, and Dean deflates, cursing under his breath. 

\--

“Can I help you gentlemen?” 

Sam turns around slowly, checking to make sure his jacket’s still buttoned, wiping out stray creases as he lays a friendly smile on the man approaching them. Dean, next to him, has his tie loosened and his shirt-sleeves rolled up, a compromise they settled on in the motel room. 

“Sure hope so,” Sam says, letting his accent smooth into northern California, the financial district in downtown San Francisco and the slow, off-duty tone of a fast-paced lawyer. “My brother and I are up visiting our mother, her birthday tomorrow,” and the florist nods, takes in Dean with a glance, smiles for Sam to continue. “Friends of ours said they’d heard good things about you,” he adds. 

Dean cuts off the florist’s smile, says, brisk, “We’re looking for blue roses. D’you do those or are we wasting time here?” 

Sam wants to roll his eyes, because Dean sounds so fake, but the florist must not think so, because he immediately starts listing prices for bouquets, vases, everything they can do with blue roses. 

“We need thirteen,” Dean says. He cuts the florist off, and Sam hides a grin, because that, more than anything, will convince anyone around them that they belong in these clothes, in this store. “Cut, no fancy vase or anything, by noon. Can you do that or do we need to take our money somewhere else?” 

“By noon,” the florist says, repeating Dean as if to convince himself that Dean really said that. When Dean nods, the man rocks back on his heels, checks his watch, murmurs, “Noon.” He thinks for a moment, then asks them to excuse him and walks off in the direction of a back room. 

Sam looks at Dean, raises an eyebrow and makes a show of checking his watch, then his phone, then his watch again. Dean starts heading for the door, and, just as Sam’s turning to follow him, the man comes back out, tells them they can have the roses by eleven, if they so wish. 

Dean looks at the man, a long, studying look, and Sam wants to laugh when the man swallows. 

“Have them ready by noon. Our schedule’s full until then.” Dean crosses his arms, the florist agrees, and Sam manages to make it out of the shop and around the corner before laughter bends him nearly in half. 

\--

The flowers in Sam’s lap smell like fresh water and salt, odd mix, but they’re getting closer to the ocean now as well, and the breeze whipping in through Dean’s open windows might have something to do with it. They’re coming up to the Hoh River on the 101 from the south side of Olympic National Park, and even Dean’s relaxed a little, turned the music down, tapping out an absent rhythm on the steering wheel as he takes in the scenery. 

“So, this purifying,” Dean says, once they’ve passed through a small town right along the highway. “How’re we supposed to do this? Old school Christian stuff or something else?”

Sam hums, looks down at the books scattered by his feet. “A lot of people who still believe in Baba Yaga keep to some of the older folk traditions, but they’re Russian Orthodox as well. Either one, I think, but I get the feeling from some of the legends that it doesn’t matter so long as we try.” 

Dean nods, lets the song finish and the next one start before he grins wickedly and says, “You know, we could always just make our own up. Strip down, run into the ocean a few times, wave our hands, chant some Latin about sanctifying and purifying, call it a day. What do you think?” 

Sam laughs and Dean’s smile turns gentle, secret just for the two of them. Sam finds himself mirroring that same smile a minute later and looks out of the window before something gives away the way he’s feeling, comfortable, safe, like they can do anything in the world that they want to. It’s a feeling Sam likes but one he doesn’t let stay for very long, not when it stirs up some part of him deep inside, the same part that gives him nightmares, that Meg tapped into when she possessed him, that the cult in Southern California tried to call out when they got their hands on him last year, so he shakes it off and thinks about rituals.

“There’s one in Dad’s journal, I think,” he says, and looks over at Dean, who’s frowning, thinking, trying to draw up the contents of that worn and tattered journal in his mind. 

They’ve both gone through it enough times to have it pretty much memorised, so it doesn’t surprise Sam when Dean says, “The one near the back, when he was talking about that hoodoo witch, right? The elemental ritual.” Dean thinks for a moment, finally says, “Do you think we could do it at the same time? We can’t be more than an hour away and I don’t want those damn flowers dying before we get there.” 

Sam purses his lips, looks down at the roses and traces a line of petals overlapping one another, finally says, “We might be better off just finding a priest. It’d be the quickest way.” 

\--

They end up stopping at a Catholic Church outside of Neilton. Sam hates lying to priests but ends up spinning a tale about how he and Dean are best friends, about to be deployed to a base in South Korea, and with everything being the way it is, would like to be blessed before they leave. The priest, an old guy with an American flag folded up and framed on his office wall, smiles at them, tells them not to leave it so late next time, and blesses them both, purifies them and sanctifies them, sends them off with a vial of Holy Water each. 

Outside the church, in a patch of sunlight, Sam takes a deep breath and looks at his brother. 

“Ready?” Dean asks. 

Sam cracks his neck, feels muscles pull as he walks to the Impala. “Always.” 

“Then let’s find the bitch and get this over with,” Dean says, opening the driver’s side door. 

Sam rolls his eyes, follows suit and folds himself onto the passenger seat, closes the door, careful of the roses.

\--

They drive around the edge of Olympic National Park for an hour, going north, until they see a sign just before they drive onto a bridge, pointing out Hoh River beneath them. Sam looks at Dean, who looks back, and Dean hangs a right on the next road, driving them into the forest. 

The road curves to follow the river, and Dean drives as far as he can, until the worn path turns into grass beneath their tires. He parks, the two of them get out, and Sam picks up the roses, cradles them in his arms. 

“I guess we’re walking from here,” he says, needlessly, as Dean’s checking his gun’s magazine. 

“It’d be better if we knew exactly _where_ we’re going,” Dean mutters, grabbing extra ammunition. “Damn prophets never give good directions.”

Sam gives his brother, who isn’t looking, a half-smile, then scans the trees around them. “I’ll see if I can pick anything up,” he says, “but Rose didn’t give us much to go on, and this park’s pretty big.” 

Dean looks up, looks around them, and scowls. 

\--

Sam stiffens, stops in his tracks, turns his head to the left. Dean’s right there, gun in his hand, cocked and ready to shoot, but Sam shakes his head. “I’m getting vibes,” he says, “that’s all. I think it’s Baba Yaga.” 

“But you’re not sure,” Dean points out. 

Sam can’t deny it, not when it could be wood sprites or something deadly, so he just sighs and lets Dean take the lead, giving him murmured instructions when the direction Sam’s vibes are radiating from changes. 

It’s tedious but the safest way to do this, especially when Sam’s carrying an armful of roses, wouldn’t be able to grab a weapon very quickly at all, and after a mile or so, they’re standing at the edge of a clearing, looking at a house built on stilts, low fence topped with skulls around the edges. Sam can see a broom sweeping back and forth on a trampled-in dirt path, clearing off branches and leaves, but it’s moving by itself, no one using it. 

“What,” Dean says.

Sam cuts him off, says, “Crash course. Ask about the horses if you have to, but not whatever those are. She doesn’t like that. Actually, she doesn’t like questions that much at all, so lay off the unnecessary ones. And Dean, _try_ to be polite.” 

Dean huffs, mutters something under his breath, and he’s putting the gun in his jeans when the front door of the house opens. Baba Yaga stands there, hands on her hips, white hair reflecting the sunlight. Sam looks at Dean, shrugs, and they walk out of the forest, into the clearing, through the gate in the fence, footsteps in sync. 

\--

“I was wondering when you’d get here,” she says once they get closer. She looks at them both, and while Dean doesn’t do anything, Sam shivers under her gaze, hawkish and piercing. Neither of them say anything, not right away, and she nods, gives them a tight smile. 

“We brought you blue roses, Baba Yaga,” Sam says, offering them to her, arms outstretched. “We hope you like them.” 

She doesn’t take them, merely stands there, staring, until Sam feels foolish, but he doesn’t pull them back. When she moves, it almost surprises him; she steps out of her house, down one of the stairs, and leans forward, smells the roses. They must startle her, because she gives them both another look, then takes the roses, all of them, in her hands. 

“They’ll do,” she says, and finally smiles at them. “They’re _real_ , aren’t they. Not dyed or plastic, not some clever metaphor, and even if you didn’t pay for them, you did do the work. I can’t fault you for that. Come on in. I’ll make tea.”


	3. Deuxième Partie

She doesn’t act like Sam thought Baba Yaga would act, but some things that he did expect are the same. Invisible beings are cleaning the house; she walks past them without taking note of them though Dean keeps one eye on them as he steps around the evidence of them, lets his fingers trace across his gun. Sam looks at his brother, raises an eyebrow, and Dean keeps his mouth shut as they both follow Baba Yaga to a living room of sorts. 

“Now,” she says, clearing off a table and dropping the roses there, ducking into another room for a minute, coming back with a bowl, a chopping board, and a sharp knife. “Suppose you tell me who sent you this way?” 

“You aren’t,” Dean says, the beginning of a question, then stops, checks himself, and says, instead, “I hope you won’t be upset with whoever told us.” 

Sam breathes an inward sigh of relief, and when Baba Yaga’s eyes sweep up to look at him, he sees amusement and that same sense of judgment she had on the steps, as if she hasn’t completely made up her mind about them yet. Or, rather, him—when she looks at Dean a moment later, she’s all grandmotherly smiles and exasperated indulgence, nothing else in her eyes or expression to hint at any misgivings or hesitation, like when she looked at Sam. 

Her eyes flick back to Sam, for a split-second, as if she can hear his thoughts, before she says, “I’d just like to know, for reference,” and starts chopping up the roses like he and Dean hadn’t just gone through hoops and a few hundred dollars to buy them. 

“I can help with that, if you’d like,” Sam says, almost before he can stop himself, and he sees Dean’s head swivel in his direction, eyes narrowed. 

He’s about ready to apologise, say he didn’t mean anything by it, but Baba Yaga stops after the next slice and says, “If you could go and start boiling the kettle,” without looking at him. “It’s on the stove, needs some water, and you’d better keep an eye on it, because it has a tendency to reach temperature without whistling.”

Sam nods, says he’d be happy to do that, and exchanges looks with Dean as he stands up, heads for the room she grabbed the knife and board from before. 

\--

The kitchen’s like the rest of the house, a curious mix of what he assumes are old Russian things, utensils and symbols and foods, and modern appliances, though how she gets water in her sink, electricity for the microwave, and gas for the stove is beyond Sam. He fills the kettle, resists the urge to go through the things on the counter, piles of letters and books and clipped magazine pages, by putting his hands in his pockets and bouncing on his feet. He faces the window while the kettle boils, looks outside and watches the sun filter through the trees, daylight streaming by faster than he thinks it should. 

The kettle whistles, a slight, quiet sound, and he turns the burner off, picks up the kettle by the handle, and takes it back into the living room, sees Dean sitting in the same place, Baba Yaga still chopping up roses, petals, stems, and all. 

“There’s a dear,” she says, without looking at Sam. “Now, come over here and pour it into the bowl, would you?” 

Sam does as directed, silently padding across the floor, letting the steam billow like clouds into the air, warming his face. Dean’s watching him but Sam doesn’t look at his brother, just stands there and waits for more directions. He can tell this is a test of sorts, like sending him alone and unsupervised into the kitchen was a test, but he’s not sure if he’s passing or not, definitely doesn’t know what, exactly, the questions are. 

Baba Yaga picks up her chopping board, scrapes petals, leaves, and stems into the bowl of hot water, and stirs with the blade of her knife. The water starts turning shades of blue and green, and Dean leans backwards, nose slightly wrinkled as Sam watches. 

She draws the knife out of the water, studies the patterns on the blade, and Sam follows the ebbs and flows of water, moving drips and lines, with his eyes, and blinks when something changes and he sees a forest full of women wearing white and screaming. 

“Ah,” Baba Yaga says, tilting the knife and using it to look back at Sam, who’s standing over her shoulder. He locks eyes with the reflection, shudders as she takes in his face, maybe something deeper, by the way he can feel her, like her hands all over him, inside of him. “That would explain why she helped you, I think,” she murmurs, then turns, letting the knife fall back into the water, stirring absently. 

“I told her about Rose,” Dean says, looking back and forth between Baba Yaga and Sam. “Figured it’d be okay, seeing as how she probably already knew.” Dean’s eyes are narrowed, like he knows something just happened between Sam and the woman but can’t quite figure out what, not until he looks down and sees Sam’s hands clenched into fists, knuckles white and fingers trembling. “Sam,” he says, but stops.

Baba Yaga stirs the water once more, then reaches in and touches the surface with her finger. Sam watches as it breaks, as her fingernail sinks below, sending out a ripple that hits the edges of the bowl and bounces back, hits her finger and bounces back, hits the edge and bounces, never stopping, never losing momentum, one ripple that bounces and turns, over and over and over again, and in the bottom of the blue-tinged water, Sam sees fire, flames twisting and soaring, leaping and glowing in ashed-out oranges and reds. 

He blinks, runs one hand through his hair, and the water in the bowl is a deep, dark blue-green. Baba Yaga shakes droplets off of the knife that hit the table and sink in to wood. 

“Very well,” she says. “I’ll help, but under one condition.” 

Sam looks at Dean, whose eyes are burning with determination, then back at Baba Yaga. They wait, don’t ask her what the condition is, and she smiles. She lifts her fingertip to her mouth, sucks lightly, and Sam sees some of the crow’s feet around her eyes fade back into her skin. She looks younger.

“Three things,” she says. Sam tilts his head in question and she says, “You bring me back three things that I want, and I’ll tell you how to get your _zhar-ptitsa_ , where he is and how to trap him.” 

“Three things,” Dean says, and Sam can hear the anger bubbling up under the despair. This has already taken days, days they could have been hunting for the firebird themselves, and now they’re going to bargain with Baba Yaga, be sent off on some type of quest, like they’re looking for the Holy Grail. 

Sam knows what his brother’s thinking, and part of him agrees: they are good hunters, in and of themselves. They could try going at it alone, see what they come up with, but there’s no guarantee, and their father’s been in hell for years, one more day probably won’t make a difference in the long run but it will hurt. 

“And those three things,” Sam says, cutting Dean off before Dean can say anything else. “They’re,” he says, and trails off after that one word, before it becomes a question. 

Baba Yaga lifts the bowl to her lips, takes a sip, and ten years drop off of her like dry and dead skin, flaking to the floor, swept away by invisible hands. Her hair has some colour now and the wrinkles have faded; she’s still old but not by as much, and when she grins widely at them, her teeth aren’t rotted, aren’t crooked or yellow. 

“For the first, a chest guarded by a clan of _vila_ , which contains the soul of Koschei the Deathless,” she says first, and Sam’s heart sinks, because he’s read the books he stole from Purdue back to front, and he knows the names, what they mean. “An unhatched _cikavac_ egg for the second, a real treasure, and a basket of _raskovnik_ for the third.”

Dean looks at Sam, who’s standing there, looking at Baba Yaga, lips apart and eyes wide. “We’re not Vasilissa,” Sam says, breathless. “Or princes.”

Baba Yaga smiles and says, “No, but you both have other gifts.” She stands up, bowl in one arm, and says, “Now, you have heard my bargain. I’ll thank you kindly to leave and not return until you bring me what I want.” 

“Is any of that stuff even in this country?” Dean asks, and Baba Yaga pauses on her way to another sip of tea. “I mean, come _on_ , it’s all Russian myth. We’re supposed to go to Russia for them? I don’t think so. No, this is fucking ridiculous. Sam, come on.” 

“Maybe you should just open your eyes,” Baba Yaga says, words dropping like stones into Sam’s ears. “You won’t have to go very far to find them all.”

He hears echoes of something inside of her tone, prophecy or warning, maybe both, and it sends shivers up and down his spine, makes beads of sweat form on his forehead. “The chest containing Koschei’s soul, a _cikavac_ egg, unhatched, and a basket of _raskovnik_.” 

Baba Yaga nods, Dean huffs, and Sam follows his brother back to the Impala. 

\--

“She’s nuts,” Dean says, once they’re out of the woods, back in the Impala and heading for a motel they passed on the way out here. “She’s absolutely fucking nuts to think we’re gonna go out and run her errands for her.” 

Sam doesn’t say anything. His head aches, that and his skin, stretched too tight over his body, little aches and pains pulsing with every beat of his heart. He’s trying to think, trying to pull together everything he’s ever heard about Koschei the Deathless, everything he read on the drive out here, and he’s starting to wonder if the things Baba Yaga wants aren’t as much a riddle as anything else. 

Dean’s still talking, swearing and muttering under his breath, and Sam’s almost got himself convinced that they’re all metaphors for something else until he remembers the way Baba Yaga looked at the roses when she saw that they were real, the way she _is_ Baba Yaga at the same time she isn’t, not really. 

It won’t be the real Koschei, maybe, but something else that’s immortal, that’s separated from its soul, and they won’t be _vila_ , necessarily, but they might be wood-nymphs or harpies, something similar. But, then again, she would have been speaking in metaphors and analogies if that was the case, and try as he might, Sam just doesn’t think she was. 

“Sam?” Dean says. 

It startles Sam, knocks him out of his thoughts, and he looks at his brother, says, “Sorry. Thinking. What?” 

“We’re here,” Dean says, and then frowns, asks, “Are you feeling okay? You don’t look very good.” 

Sam lifts one hand, rubs the back of his neck, lets his fingers trail over his shoulder, rub the skin and massage the muscle. “I’m fine,” he says. “I was just thinking about what Baba Yaga said.” 

Dean huffs, but the noise doesn’t erase the worried expression from his eyes. “She’s _fucking nuts_ , Sam. Don’t think too hard, okay? Wouldn’t want to hurt that geekboy brain of yours.” 

“Hey,” Sam says, arguing back without heat. Dean’s forehead furrows, one eyebrow lifts, and Sam says, “You get the room, I’ll grab the gear.” 

\--

Dean goes to sleep but Sam doesn’t. Bathed in light from the glow of the laptop, he’s still surfing the internet when Dean wakes up four hours later. 

“Dude, sleep,” Dean mutters, eyes half-closed, eyelashes stuck together, voice dry and rasping. 

“I’ll get there,” Sam promises, voice just as soft, as he writes something in a notebook next to the keyboard, just enough light to make sure he’s not writing over words he’s already scribbled down. “Go back to sleep, Dean.” 

Dean huffs, rolls over, and says, “Y’better. Don’t look good. Like when Chrissie,” and he falls asleep mid-sentence. 

Sam looks over, watches Dean sleep for a few seconds, and then gets back to work, rubbing his shoulder, his neck, absently biting at the skin around his nails. 

\--

“I have some ideas,” he says, as soon as Dean looks awake enough to comprehend what Sam’s saying. 

Dean scoots to the edge of his bed, dips one foot out from under the covers, then pulls it back in quickly, reaching down for socks as he asks, “What kind of ideas, about what?” Sam rubs his eyes, and before he can say anything, Dean says, “Don’t tell me, you didn’t get any sleep, did you. Sam, fuck, come on. You need to sleep.”

It’s an argument they’ve had more than once over the past year, more than once a week, sometimes. Sam knows which buttons Dean’s pushing, knows that Dean’s right about most of them, that Sam doesn’t react as well if he’s tired, that his gifts take more out of him if he doesn’t keep well rested, that he can’t cover Dean’s back if he’s yawning and sluggish. 

“I know,” Sam says, quiet.

That admission is, more than anything, a confession, one that has Dean off the bed and standing behind Sam a moment later. Dean’s feeling Sam’s forehead, Sam’s cheeks, and he’s frowning, shaking his head, saying that Sam’s too hot, running a fever, needs to take some drugs and go to bed, but Sam stops his brother mid-syllable, says, “Dean, I have some ideas. About what Baba Yaga wants.”

“I don’t care what the hell she wants,” Dean snaps, and the low throaty rumble makes Sam shiver, has him swallowing back words he’s not sure he comprehends. “And neither should you, okay? You should be sleeping. Fuck, Sam, you could have another vision, or we could run across another kid, and you wouldn’t be able to do a thing, would you?” 

“Koschei the Deathless separated himself from his soul,” Sam says, turning back to the laptop, to his notes. “He hid his soul in a needle, hid the needle in an egg, which is in a duck, which is in a rabbit, which is in a chest. Legend has it that the chest is buried under an oak tree on an island in the middle of the ocean, but Baba Yaga seems to think we can get the chest, which means it’s somewhere on land. Now, she said it was guarded by a clan of _vila_ , and they only live.” 

Dean cuts him off by shutting the laptop lid and slipping Sam’s notebook out from under Sam’s fingertips, says, “Sleep, Sam. It can wait.” 

Sam knows Dean’s only looking out for him, but now he’s getting upset. “If you’d let me finish, stopped interrupting, I’d be done sooner,” he says, rubs his temples. “Please Dean,” he says, and then adds, in a quieter voice, “for Dad.” 

“I hate it when you use him against me like that,” Dean says after a pause. “I really, really do.” 

Sam waits, feels pain battering around his head like a drum, and says, “I know. But I’m not sorry.”

Dean sighs, moves away from Sam, kicks out the other chair from the table, and drops into it with a grunt, slouching and wriggling until he’s comfortable, one foot propped up on the table supports. “Well, lay it on me, then.” 

With a weary smile, Sam picks up where he left off. “The chest is guarded by a clan of _vila_ , and _vila_ like storms, like green things and lots of sky.”

“We’re talking Midwest, then,” Dean says. “Plains states.”

Sam nods, pulls his notebook close enough to open it again, flip through it, and says, “Remember when we were in Iowa, few months ago? The freak storm, the unexplainable disappearances, the divorce rate? We thought it was some kind of nature spirit, but it fits the _vila_ , too. Only thing is, there could be dozens of clans scattered across the country, because, yeah, it fits the Plains states, but it fits just about every other one, too, especially this time of year.” 

“I’m assuming you’ve got some kind of lead, though,” Dean says, “and aren’t just telling me this to depress me. Right?” 

“Of course,” Sam replies, grinning even through the tiredness. “Baba Yaga said we wouldn’t have to go very far to find anything she asked for, remember? I checked weather reports for the surrounding few states, went back to look for anything strange, cross-checked all of that with missing persons reports, and cross-checked _those_ with immigrant patterns.” 

Dean shakes his head, mutters, “I am never, ever leaving you at the Roadhouse with Ash for the weekend again. Never.” Sam ducks his head to hide a smile, and Dean says, volume back to normal, “So? Where are we going?” 

“Ever heard of Okanogan County?” When Dean says no, Sam says, “They’re famed for having three hundred days of sun a year, but they had three straight days of rain and thunderstorms last month, enough to flood some of the more adventurous trails. Three hikers went missing, all male.” Sam pauses, says, “It’s a four, five hour drive to Twisp.” 

“ _Twisp_?” Dean echoes, both eyebrows raised this time, but he’s leaning forward and looking at the map Sam’s pushed over which means he’s interested, thinks this is worth checking out. 

Sam shrugs, sits back in his chair. “Originally Gloversville, but they renamed it. There were a few Russians who worked logging back in the day and there are still a few descendents in the area.” 

Dean studies the map a moment longer, then looks up at Sam and asks, “You getting any vibes about it?” Sam shrugs again, blinks, lets his eyelids linger closed for a couple seconds. “You’ll sleep in the car.” 

It’s not a question, so Sam doesn’t treat it as one, just says, “Yeah,” and unfolds himself from the chair, joints popping after a full, sleepless night of research. 

\--

He wakes up as they’re skirting the edges of Olympia. Sam shifts in his seat, sees Mt. Rainier in the distance, closes his eyes again. 

“How’re you feeling?” Dean asks. 

“M’head hurts,” Sam mumbles, shifts again, can’t feel like there’s any way to be comfortable, crammed into the front seat, knees knocking against the glove compartment, skin sticking to the leather. “M’head. Ava.” He stops, turns his head, presses the heel of his palms against his eyes. “Ava came here, once. Vacation. Jazz festival. She wanted to go to Chicago, or Memphis, but her fiancé had friends that lived in the suburbs. And Melanie, she used to hang out here with her friends, some coffee shop downtown, with books and. It was the best whipped cream, Dean, I can taste it, it was so _fresh_.” 

There’s a hand on his forehead, so cool against his skin it almost burns and he can’t help the hiss of pain. “Shit. Damn it, Sam, I told you to sleep. Can you block it off?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sam says. His skin doesn’t feel like it fits, stretched too tight over his bones, and the pounding in his head is about to make his ears bleed, he knows the feeling, has it memorised from times that he hasn’t lived through. “I just, I’ll sleep.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. “You do that,” and the vibrations of the Impala make Sam groggy, like he’s on the water, lulled from side to side, until he gets pulled under and sinks into sleep, purr of the Impala following him.

\--

The next time Sam wakes up, it’s dark and there’s a dried line of drool down his chin. He blinks, body aching but head clear, and wipes off his face with his sleeves, looks around to figure out what’s going on. He’s still in the Impala, but it’s parked behind a motel, and the door to one room is open, lights on inside. Sam blinks again, opens the door and stands up, closes the door and stretches, feeling his limbs pop back into place, feeling the pull of skin over a body that feels like it’s his. 

He bends down, waits for his back to crack, and once it has and he’s standing up again, he sees Dean standing in the open doorway, holding a piece of a gun in one hand, rag in the other, smells gun oil filtering thick and pungent out into the air. 

“You shouldn’t’ve let me sleep,” Sam says. He can hear Dean scoffing, and starts walking toward the room, taking in the mountains around them with one eye, smelling the air, clean and fresh. 

“Yeah, well, you needed it, dumbass,” Dean says. Once Sam’s closer, Dean looks at him, studies his face, the way he’s standing, and says, “You look better. How’s your head?” 

Sam lifts one hand, runs it through his hair, and says, “Better. I think I’ve got it under control. Sorry about that.”

“Just don’t let it get to that point again and we’ll call it even,” Dean says, turning his back on Sam, going into the room. Sam follows, sees their duffels at the foot of each bed, sees the laptop plugged in and open on the table, sees the television on and tuned to a horror movie from the early eighties, sees a few cartons on the stand between the beds and the remnants of a six-pack on the floor next to the guns Dean’s already cleaned. “Chinese for dinner, don’t touch the remote, we'll go after the _vila_ in the morning. Got it?” 

Sam grins, settles on one of the beds, grabs a couple cartons and a pair of chopsticks, and says, “Did you do the knives yet? They could really use a sharpening.” He opens the rice, and ducks when Dean throws a pair of dirty socks right at his face.

\--

“So, just how are we supposed to find the _vila_?” Dean asks, gun in his hand, voice low and thoughtful.

Sam snorts, answers, “And you didn’t think you should ask before we came out hiking? Dean.” 

Dean turns, looks at him, says, “What?” and sounds defensive. “Oh, like we’re actually going to find them right away. We’re going to hike, and not find them, and then you’ll start whining and I’ll run out of M&Ms, and we’ll have to go hustle tonight, and, I dunno, when we leave the bar they’ll be there.” Sam gives Dean an incredulous look, and Dean says, “Dude, _what_? Come on, shit like that always happens to us.” 

Sam looks back at the trail, jumps over a fallen tree-trunk, and stops right in his tracks. Dean, behind him, freezes, aims, and then looks around Sam. 

“Holy,” he whispers. 

Funny enough, Sam can’t think of anything better to say.

He knows, intellectually, that the _vila_ are like wood nymphs, that they can shape-change, that they’re bound to the land, that they aren’t human at all. But they certainly look it, look like beautiful women, blondes and brunettes and redheads, curvy and smiling, clothes moulded to their hips and breasts, long legs and slender wrists. They must be forty or fifty of them there, and every single of the forty or fifty are looking right at Sam and Dean. 

Sam can almost feel Dean vibrating behind him, and he steps back, knocks against Dean. “I don’t think we need to worry about finding them,” he mutters. 

“Don’t care,” Dean whispers back. “What are we here for, anyway?” 

Sam locks eyes with one of the _vila_ in the back, a blonde leaning against a tree, big green eyes and white teeth, and says, “I don’t remember.” 

\--

The _vila_ move closer as a group and Dean elbows past Sam to greet them. Sam’s hearing something just in audible range, some kind of music that’s hypnotising, urging him to give in, to forget, to enjoy life and enjoy what’s in front of his eyes. He knows it’s wrong, knows something’s happening, but that music sinks in and melds with his bones, and he’s following Dean a moment later. 

Waves of laughter greet him, and the blonde reaches her hands out to Sam. “Welcome,” she says.

Sam takes her hands, lets them settle in his, fingertips on her wrists, but there’s no pulse fluttering under his touch, no heat to her flesh. He flinches, pulls back, and she looks at him, worried. 

“What’s wrong?” she asks, sliding her way into his arms, wrapping hers around his waist, grinding up against him. “Come on,” she murmurs, leaning up and nibbling his jaw. “Come on, baby. Just give in. Your friend’s enjoying himself, you wanna be left behind?” 

She turns his head, and Sam sees Dean sitting on the ground, girl on each side, one at his feet, one sitting on a tree branch above him, sees Dean smiling and laughing, sees the gun lying on the ground, forgotten. 

The gun. Why is there a gun? 

“No, don’t think about it,” the blonde says. A moment later, another blonde sashays her way over and they wind around him like cats, settle one on each side, hands digging into the waistband of his jeans, lips trailing over his neck, his arms. 

“Come on,” they say, and start to tug him off of the trail. 

Sam shakes his head, frowns, and when they press against him and plead, he closes his eyes in a grimace. This is wrong, this is all wrong, he knows it’s wrong, and when he opens his eyes, he sees Jess in the curves of the blonde, Jess in the tangle of hair, _Dean_ in the cast of her worried eyebrows. It’s not Jess, though, he knows that, and Dean’s laughing somewhere to the side, and everything comes back in a rush. 

When they come for him again, he steps back, pulls out his own gun, and growls, “Where’s the chest?” The blonde turns wide eyes on him, gapes, so he says it again, “Where’s the chest? Baba Yaga sent us to get it and to free you from Koschei.” 

She hisses at Koschei’s name, and the _vila_ not draped over Dean start swarming towards Sam. He can feel something, their power, he guesses, battering at his mind, but he thinks of Jess, of Dean trapped here, and their power flutters away like cherry blossoms, falling to the ground. “What do you know of safety?” the blonde snarls, and lifts her hands, fingernails like claws. “What do you know of the Deathless One?” 

“Where is the chest,” Sam says, and when she doesn’t say anything, when he can feel their power flaring, he draws up his own. 

The _vila_ drop back as if they were stung, and the blonde’s eyes fill with tears. “He’ll kill us if we let anything happen to it,” she whispers. “He’ll kill us all, you can’t take it, please.” 

“With the chest gone, his power over you is gone,” Sam replies, and when the blonde looks confused, puzzled, he says, “Use your charm on him. He might be deathless, but he’s only a man beneath that, same as the rest of us.” 

She looks shocked, like the thought never occurred to her, and the other _vila_ start murmuring amongst themselves. Sam rolls his eyes and looks at Dean, who looks like he’s having far too much fun. 

“Can you take the spell off my brother?” he asks. 

A different _vila_ steps forward, feet stepping lightly on the grass, and says, “Once the net is cast and the prey caught, nothing of our doing can release them. Our gift and our curse, both.” 

Sam nods once, and thinks. Nothing of their doing, but he was caught and managed to slip out. How? His eyes scan the _vila_ watching him, and rest on the blonde again, the one who looks like Jess but isn’t. Jess. Someone he loved and lost, someone who’ll never come back. And, and Dean, who might be stuck here for the rest of his life, unless Sam can figure out how to free him.

Something in him clenches at the thought, the way he always feels the moment after someone mentions Jess or he thinks about her, the way he feels when something catches him off-guard and reminds him of her and he hates that he’s using her memory this way, but if it gets them their father back, if it gets them even one step closer to having John back, then Sam will deal with it, no matter how much it hurts. 

Sam’s eyes flick to Dean, but then back to the _vila_ , and he asks, “Where’s the chest?” None of them answer, so Sam says, starting to get frustrated, “Look, Baba Yaga told us she wants the chest, okay? We aren’t stupid enough to keep it ourselves, and you didn’t want it, did you? So tell me where it is before I level the mountain looking for it, and you won’t have to worry about it or Koschei any more.” 

They turn and exchange looks with each other, silent conversations, and, finally, the blonde points at a tree not too far away, leaves green and full, leafy, puddles around the base. Sam sighs, is inordinately relieved he and Dean thought to bring a shovel, and goes over to the tree, starts digging. 

\--

The chest is wooden, oak of some kind, with hammered iron straps and words from the Cyrillic alphabet carved into the sides and front latch. Sam runs his fingers over the latch, then stands up, picks up the chest and takes it with him. The _vila_ are watching silently as he stops at Dean’s feet, swallowing trepidation away at the sight of his brother’s glazed eyes, the _vila_ who are sitting there, waiting. 

Sam thinks of love and loss, then says, “Dean, I’m going to sell the Impala for parts.” No response—Sam didn’t think there would be, no matter how much Dean loves his car, but he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to go any further than that. He has ammunition, he knows, but all of the rest of it will hurt, hurt Dean to hear and hurt Sam to say. 

“Mom died and Dad died.” Dean blinks, but the momentary look of anger disappears back into laughter almost before Sam can see it. Sam bites his lip, presses a little harder. “They left you, Dean, and they’ll never be back, you won’t ever see them again.” 

Nothing, and Sam takes a deep breath, ignoring the way that the _vila_ are watching him. “I left you for Stanford, Dean, and if you hadn’t come to get me, you never would have seen me again.” Dean tilts his head, and the glazed look in his eyes halves. “I’m sick of this life. First chance I get, I’m leaving, and this time I’ll hide so you won’t be able to find me, not ever, no matter how hard you look.” 

Dean pushes the _vila_ away, rises to his feet, and says, “You’re a bastard, you know that?” even as Sam can see Dean fighting to hold panic in check. 

“Yeah, well, it worked, and I got the chest, so bitch about it later,” Sam says, voice carefully even, watching as Dean takes in the small trunk under Sam’s arm, the way Sam’s still standing there, waiting. 

Dean picks up his gun, grabs the shovel, doesn’t meet eyes with any of the _vila_ , and hightails it in the direction of the car. 

“If Koschei bothers you too much, get word to Baba Yaga,” Sam says to the _vila_ , hearing his brother stop once he’s a good distance away. He knows Dean’s waiting for him, so Sam lets his eyes scan over the women before he nods once, says, “Thanks,” and leaves, walking in Dean’s footsteps. 

He follows Dean back to the Impala, puts the chest in the back seat, slides into the front passenger seat, and leans down to fiddle with his shoelaces. 

\--

“You weren’t serious, were you?” Dean asks when they’re on the way back to the motel. “About selling the Impala for parts, I mean.” 

Both of them know that’s not what Dean meant, not what he’s really asking, so Sam’s quiet when he says, “No. I wasn’t serious. Sometimes I get tired of dealing with demons, but I’m not going anywhere.” Heavy silence, until Sam adds, “And even if I was, which I’m _not_ , you’d always be able to find me.”

Dean snorts, says, “Damn straight, little brother,” and they stop for dinner and a beer before bed. 

Sam pretends not to notice the way Dean doesn’t stray too far away, the way Dean keeps watching him, and he doesn’t think too hard about why his skin crawls every time Dean touches him.

\--

“So,” Dean says the next morning, after they’ve both showered and eaten a late brunch, made their way back to the motel room. “That wasn’t that bad. What’s next, some kind of egg?” 

Sam nods, hums absently and rifles through his stack of notes, which seems to be getting bigger and bigger. “A _cikavac_ egg. _Cikavacs_ are Serbian, not Russian, so there’s not much in the books we stole from Purdue, but Wikipedia has an entry about them, says they’re like winged birds. Apparently, they fulfil wishes and help people understand animals.”

Dean looks impressed, then asks, “So why are we giving the egg to Baba Yaga? If it grants wishes, we should keep it, wish for the damn firebird, wish for Dad back, wish for the demon to leave us the fuck alone.” 

“I’m not sure it could grant those kinds of wishes,” Sam says quietly. “And for it to hatch, a woman needs to carry it around for forty days. I can’t see Ellen or Missouri going along with it.” 

Dean makes a face at that, finishes guzzling the coffee in his Styrofoam cup, and asks, “Any ideas where we start looking for it?” 

Sam sighs, leans back in his chair and looks up at Dean, who’s studying the runes taped to the walls and windows. “She said it was a real treasure, but beyond that,” he says, trailing off. Sam hates admitting that he’s at a dead-end, that no matter how much research he does, he can’t figure out the answer based on what he knows, but there’s nothing else to say. He’s tried everything he can think of, but he has no clue where in the Pacific Northwest a _cikavac_ egg, unhatched, at that, might be. 

“She said it was a treasure,” Dean says, echoing Sam, and when Sam looks up again, Dean’s staring out of the window. Sam sits up, because he knows what that tone of Dean’s means: Dean’s thinking, might be close to something. “And we’re living a fucking fairytale, here.” Dean turns to Sam, ghost of a smile on his lips, and asks, “In a fairy tale, where’s all the good shit?” 

Sam’s mind races, and when he stumbles across an answer, he gapes, answers in a strangled voice, “Dragons?” 

“Maybe this one won’t be that bad,” Dean says, nodding as he crumples his coffee cup and tosses it in the garbage can across the room. “I mean, dragons, right? Pretty easy to kill. Caleb did a couple when we were kids.” 

Dean looks and sounds convinced, but Sam’s relatively sure that Dean, saying that? Means this one’s not going to be fun at all.

\--

Sam ignores Dean for the next six hours. It’s not on purpose, though it is at the same time; he gets out the books from Purdue and gleans every inch of information he can from them before turning to the internet and starting to narrow down locations. When he finally surfaces for air, Dean’s cleaning guns, ones that smell as if they’ve been used, and recently. 

Head spinning from the facts and hunches he’s got rattling around in his head, Sam doesn’t manage to say more than, “What?” before Dean’s looking at him, grinning, spots of oil covering the freckles on his cheekbones. 

“Found out there’s a range not too far away,” Dean says in explanation. “Took a couple of our bogus licenses, managed to get some target practice in. What’d you come up with?” Sam’s about ready to start, but Dean holds up one hand, says, “Hold that thought. Hungry? I could eat a horse ‘bout now.” 

Sam’s stomach rumbles before he can answer. Dean’s face breaks into a grin, and Sam can’t help returning Dean’s smile with one of his own. “Let me wash up,” he says. 

“Dude, whatever,” Dean says, immediate response. “We aren’t going anywhere that’d throw you out for looking all research-y. Hell, I don’t wanna go anywhere that’ll throw _me_ out, and I know how I look.”

“And smell,” Sam adds. 

Dean rolls his eyes, mutters something that Sam hears bits and pieces of, his name, being described as a girl, something else about the size of Sam’s dick, and goes into the bathroom to wash his face and hands. 

\--

The bar’s dingy, would be smoky, Sam thinks, if this wasn’t Washington State and smoking in restaurants wasn’t banned. Still, the lights are low, more to hide the dirt than for any sense of ambience and the peanuts on the table between Sam and Dean are fresh, the beer’s cold, bottles sliding in their hands with the condensation every time either of them take a swallow. 

“So,” Dean says, when they finally get their burgers slapped on the table by a woman that looks older than God. “Tell me what you found.” 

Sam raises an eyebrow, ignores Dean for the time it takes to take a bite of his burger, and swallows a moan. The meat’s tender and slightly undercooked, more raw than Sam usually likes, greasy but hot, and the lettuce is crisp, more than he would’ve expected from this place. Dean starts to tell Sam to start talking, but Sam says, “Fuck off, Dean, I’m hungry,” and devours his burger. 

Dean rolls his eyes, but something about the fresh meat has Sam scarfing down his food faster than even he would’ve thought possible. The fries aren’t anything special, but he’s full and feeling vaguely ill by the time he reaches them, so he pushes them over to Dean, who’s chowing down, slower, steadier. 

“What was that about?” Dean asks, nodding at the remains of Sam’s dinner. 

Sam leans back in his chair, swallows his beer, and says, slowly, “I’m not sure.” He stares at his plate, on Dean’s side of the table, and tries to think. There’s something niggling at his mind, something in the back, underneath the recent ache from Ava and deeper than a few months back, and as he sits there, tries to coax it out, he can feel his gifts flare. 

A bottle of beer, across the room on the bar, shatters. People pause, look at it, look around, but things go back to normal a handful of moments later. Dean had swivelled to stare at the pieces of broken glass, but he turns back to Sam and pales. 

Sam doesn’t want to know what Dean’s seeing, but Dean murmurs, “Your eyes, Sam,” and pushes over his own sunglasses. 

Sam puts them on, rests his forehead on one hand, and says, “It happened to Chrissie,” he says, unable to look at his brother. “Before we got to her. She went through this phase. Started happening with Melanie, right before we got there.” 

“That’s all you need to say,” Dean says. Sam can see the look on his brother’s face, even with the tint of the sunglasses turning the dim light of the bar to near-complete darkness. Perhaps it’s more of Dean’s tone, curt and sharp, with the kind of fear that makes Sam shiver. “Can we stop it?” 

“I don’t know,” Sam says. His blood is thrumming, foot tapping under the table, keeping a frenzied rhythm. He thinks back to what he knows, to what Chrissie was eventually told and Melanie never guessed, and says, “I should work off the adrenaline. Sooner the better, I guess.” 

Dean nods as if that settles things and pushes his chair away from the table. “Come on, then,” he says, throwing a couple bills on the table. Sam looks at his beer, looks at his brother, and when he shifts the sunglasses down, Dean says, “Keep them on, Sammy.” 

Sam swallows, follows Dean out. 

\--

Dean drives them out into the woods, back near the _vila_ but not close enough to draw their attention. He sets up a few things on an outcropping of rocks: tree branches, empty beer cans and bottles, a couple rotten apples, odds and ends from their motel room and a few things from the Impala, and then holds out a gun for Sam and gestures at the homemade range with the other hand. 

“I’m telling you that what happened to Chrissie before she went psycho is now somehow happening to me, you can’t even look at my eyes, and you’re _giving me a gun_?” Sam asks, flabbergasted. 

“You won’t shoot anyone with it,” Dean says, completely serious. “Especially me. Now take the gun and go crazy psychic on the stuff over there.” 

Sam stares at his brother, but when Dean shakes the gun in Sam’s face, Sam snarls and grabs it, cocks it, and glares at Dean as he shoots without looking. There’s a crack of glass seconds later, much later than if that bullet had gone anywhere near the beer bottles—in a straight line, at least. 

He looks at Dean, takes the sunglasses off, sees a muscle in Dean’s cheek tic, but Dean doesn’t break the gaze, holds Sam’s eyes. 

Sam shoots again, then again, and again, empties the entire clip, and within the rise and fall of his chest, rise and fall again, the bullets are zooming in circles around him and Dean both, humming like wasps. He feels invincible, like he can do anything, feels as if the world is ready to grovel at his feet. They have the chest of Koschei, are moving closer to getting the firebird, and once he has his father back, once he can stand and look at the demon.

“Are you sure I won’t shoot anyone?” Sam asks, cutting off his own thoughts, shying away from the path they were following, though he’s not sure why, not exactly. He’s suddenly curious to hear the answer, and the sensation in the midst of his anger, the hum of blood pouring through his ears, is foreign, strange, and yet it feels more like him than this rage. 

“Completely positive,” Dean says. 

Sam holds his brother’s eyes, then blinks. The bullets fall to the ground, make quiet thumps as they hit the dirt, and Sam sways, unsteady on his feet. Dean’s right there to grasp Sam’s elbow, keep him upright. 

“Better now?” Dean asks. His hand’s on Sam’s chin, forcing Sam to look at him, and Sam starts to smile as he can feel Dean’s thumb graze back and forth on the line of his jaw. Such a Dean thing, like he almost can’t stop himself from doing this whenever Sam’s hurt or might be in pain. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, standing up on his own, dislodging Dean’s hands. “Sorry. I don’t.” 

Dean shakes his head, takes the gun from Sam’s frozen fingers, reloads it, and gives it back to Sam. “Keep going. You said you should work it all out, right?” 

Sam nods, holds Dean’s gaze for a moment before turning to the targets Dean had set up. He aims, carefully, just once, and shoots, hardly waiting before he moves the gun slightly, shoots again, spending all the bullets, one right after the other, on different targets. When he’s done, lowered the muzzle to the ground, he looks, sees that he’s hit every bottle and can, not one of the tree branches or apples. 

He frowns, but Dean laughs. “We’ll hit the range in the morning. Guy there said tomorrow’s two-for-one day. Maybe get in some hand-to-hand practice as well, unless you’d rather do that now.” 

“Tomorrow’s soon enough,” Sam said. “I should tell you what I found out about the dragons tonight before I forget anything.” 

Dean says something short and to the point about Sam’s memory, and Sam half-smiles, following Dean back to the Impala, both of them carrying rags full of broken glass. Sam grips his a little too tightly, ends up cutting open the skin on his left palm, but the sting of broken flesh, the smell of blood, does more to settle him than even shooting the gun did. 

It worries him.

\--

“So,” Dean says, when they’re back at the motel, beers in hand, television tuned to the weather channel. “Dragons. Where’re we looking?” 

Sam leans back against the headboard of his bed, one leg off the edge of the mattress, foot on the floor, the other pulled up to his chest. All of his notes are scattered in front of him, edges starting to get creased, torn, some of the paper fluttering in the breeze of the open window. 

Without looking at any of his notes, Sam says, “Apparently they’re called _zmey_ , not dragons, and most of them have three heads. If every head isn’t cut off and the stump burned, they grow back, like a hydra. Dealing with female and male dragons is different, but since the odds of the egg remaining unhatched if it was guarded by a female are so slight as to be non-existent, I think we’ll be dealing with a male dragon, which means fire. Caves, rocks, but nothing near a lot of people,” Sam adds, “so we won’t have to worry about Mts. Rainier or Saint Helens.” 

“You’ve got some ideas, though,” Dean says, holding up the television remote, clicking through the channels. “I saw you looking at maps earlier.”

Sam leans forward, digs through the papers in front of him, and leans over the space between the beds, passing what he’d grabbed to Dean. “East of the Cascades, the state can be like a desert, right? Hot, dry, thanks to the mountains. Yakima County, especially, which is where I think we might be able to find a _zmey_.” 

Dean hums, looks at the maps and notes Sam passed over, and asks, “White Swan? Why there?” 

“The constellation Cygnus borders Draco,” Sam says, fully appreciating the irony. Dean gives him a blank look, so Sam sighs, says, “They’re close enough to the Cascades to find caves, rocks and outcroppings, something where a _zmey_ might hide. That part of Yakima County is sparsely inhabited, and male _zmey_ often actually keep an eye on agriculture, help water the fields, things like that. This is one of the best counties as far as fruits and hops are concerned, so the _zmey_ would be close, just because of that.” 

“Hops?” Dean asks, and then gives Sam’s notes a cursory glance, finally setting them down to study the map. “Y’know, we could drive down there tomorrow afternoon if we got an early start in the morning, hit up the range when they opened.” 

Sam answers by turning the television off. 

\--

The guys at the range greet Dean with a smile when he walks in to the main building, calling him Jason, asking if enjoyed his time yesterday. 

“S’my kid brother, Mark,” Dean says, when they eye Sam, cool and appraising, glances flicking down to his hands, see if they’re callused or baby-soft. Sam hands over the fake licenses for the two guns he’ll be using, both of them in the bag Dean’s carrying, and the two guys behind the counter look the licenses over, copying down Sam’s fake information. 

“A Beretta 92, 9 by 19, and a Jericho 941, 9 millimetre,” one of the guys, Craig, if the nametag is anything to go by, says. He looks moderately impressed, says, “Military,” and makes it sound like half a question. 

Sam gives Craig a hard smile and says, “Our dad served. First Marine Division. Fought in the Battle of Huế.” 

The guys, Craig included, give them a new look, different, more welcoming, if that was even possible, and Craig writes down Dean’s information, same as the day before, without even looking. 

“Still the M1911 and the Browning Hi-Power, both 9 millimetres?” he asks, nodding and writing when Dean says yes. 

\--

One of other men that works there, who introduces himself as Will, leads them both out to the range, gets them set up, and steps back. Dean starts off without any hesitation, firing quickly and without wasting time, breath, but Sam holds the Beretta, lets the weight sit heavy and familiar in his palm for a moment, before he takes aim at the target and shoots, constant firing, spaced out. 

They both study the targets when they’re done, see they’ve gone for the same pattern, half head shots, half heart shots, and that, while Dean’s are grouped more closely together in broken paper sunbursts, Sam’s are tighter to the centre of the spaces they had been aiming for. 

Will lets out a low whistle, and it draws Craig out, as well as some of the old guys who’d been inside gossiping, one or two from other spots on the range. They all look at the two targets, and Craig says, head tilted to one side, “Gentlemen, care to lay wagers on our young friends, here?” 

Dean looks at Sam and grins, reloads, and waits for a fresh target to be set up. Sam rolls his eyes, plants his feet, and remembers what it felt like to be thirteen and judged against his brother. It’s a feeling he doesn’t get very often anymore, not much since Stanford, not from anyone who doesn’t know them. Ellen looked at them that way once or twice, but Sam always thought she was comparing them, not to each other, but to their father, the way Bobby used to, or Jim, when he was still alive. 

It makes the skin between his shoulders itch, having those men behind him, not being able to watch them, and something in the back of his mind tells him that he _could_ watch them, if he wanted, that he could move them if it really bothered him that much to have them standing there, weighing him, judging him. Sam swallows the feeling down, tasting it like acid in the back of his throat, takes aim, and looks over at Dean. 

Dean’s staring at him, eyes open and placid, as if to say that Sam doesn’t have to do this, as if Dean’s picking up whatever Sam’s feeling, but Sam gives Dean a cocky grin, a raised eyebrow, and Dean nods, as if that’s settled it. 

Neither of them counts down, but when the first bullet leaves each chamber of their guns, it’s at the exact same time. 

\--

“You did good, little brother,” Dean says as they’re leaving the range, guys behind them in the building counting out money, trading cigarettes and bullets. 

Sam makes a loose fist with his right hand, clenches and relaxes three times. It doesn’t help the ache on his fingertips, the worn skin across the palm of his hand, but the words of praise from Dean have him ducking his head, trying to hide how pleased hearing that makes him. 

“Though you didn’t have to let me win,” Dean adds. 

“Yeah, right,” Sam says, scoffing, as he opens the Impala’s door, listening for the creak as much as he lets it wash over him. “I never let you win, Dean. You’re just better with the guns than I am. Now, if we were using knives,” and he trails off as they both get into the car, waits until Dean’s got the car started and they’re pulling out of the lot before he looks at his brother, expecting a response. 

He’s not sure how Dean will react, exactly. Before last night, he thinks Dean would’ve found a place, away from eyes that wouldn’t understand, and given as good as Sam even though they both know that Sam fights with a knife better than either Dean or their father. Since last night, though, Sam’s worried, about what it says about him, about what’s inside of him. 

Guns are cold and impersonal; to kill someone, it’s not impossible to be at a distance, to know nothing about the target. But with knives, warmed by contact with skin, an extension of arm and hand, it’s a hell of a lot more personal, getting in the target’s space, looking them right in the eye or drawn to the curve of the back of the neck, touching them, learning what they smell like, what they taste like, even. More people use guns because they’re easy, safe, and knives are neither, not with the training needed, the skill beyond that, the love that grows—or has inside of Sam—for silver and iron, steel and metal alloys, different calluses than guns, deeper bond with the weapon. 

It’s scared Sam before, as far back as he can remember, that he likes the knives, that he’s so good with them, attuned to them in a way that means they’re like parts of him, colder and harder than he’ll ever be but still _him_. The past year, it’s been getting harder and harder to ignore, hunting demons and psychics like he and Dean have, feet always on the road, sulfur and blood always on their hands, but after last night, after knowing that what happened to Chrissie, what was happening to Melanie, Bill, the others, is happening to him, Sam’s starting to feel fear in a way he hasn’t since he fell in love with Jess. 

“Still awake?” Dean asks, looking over at Sam with concern. 

Sam registers, distantly, that Dean’s been talking to him, but Sam’s been too lost in thought to answer, to even hear his brother. “Yeah, sorry. Just thinking.” 

“Yeah, well,” Dean says, glancing over once more before he turns his attention back to the road. “I said, d’you want to go somewhere and get some work with the knives in? I’m sure there’s a place around here we could find without anyone throwing purses at us.” 

Sam snorts, remembering well the time they’d been in Florida, behind a motel and worried more about alligators than other people, to their detriment. That woman’s purse had to have been loaded with rocks, the way it left bruises. 

“If you wanna,” Sam says. “We could do some hand-to-hand, too, but we should really be leaving by two if we want to hit White Swan at a decent time.” 

\--

Sam runs his fingers over the box of knives, each one strapped in its own spot, blades gleaming, handles worn but clean. He’s had these knives since he was seventeen, birthday present from his father once he’d gone through his growth spurts. They’re precious to him, the only weapons he’d taken with him when he left for Stanford, stuffed in the bottom of his duffel along with a can of polish and some threadbare rags. He’d told Jess they were a present, that he went hunting with his father and brother and ending up doing more of the skinning and tearing down than stalking, and she’d said better knives than a gun before smoothing down his hair and kissing the top of his head. 

Stainless steel, blessed by a dozen different priests, and they sang to him from the moment he opened the box, years ago. 

He finally pulls out the Skinner Ka-Bar, tests the edge of the blade with his thumb and draws blood. Dean looks over his shoulder, says, “We’re going for four inch blades or over?” and opens his own case of knives, chooses a short, non-serrated USMC Ka-Bar, blade an inch longer than Sam’s. It’s one of Dean’s favourites, if he was forced to pick, Sam knows that, but he knows, as well, that it helps towards evening out Dean’s reach with Sam’s, and that the non-serrated blade will hurt less when it cuts him open. 

They lock the Impala and leave her sitting in a dirt parking lot, head into some thick tree cover half an hour outside of Twisp, having seen no other cars on the drive out here. Dean leads them to a clearing, small, reeking of raspberries even if Sam doesn’t see any, but it’ll do, and Sam shrugs off two layers, until he’s just wearing jeans and a t-shirt. His skin crawls with goosebumps in the shade, and he waits until Dean’s stripped down to the same, before he falls into position, knees bent, eyes fixed on his brother. 

“First blood?” Dean asks, and when Sam says yes, Dean nods once, starts moving. Sam circles with him, neither of them making any attempt to go on the offensive. 

Sam falls into a kind of stillness, his mind buzzing clean with white noise and static, focused on his brother and his breathing. The knife in his hand is held loose, and when Dean lunges forward, Sam dances away from Dean’s blade and brings his own up. 

It’s not pretty, this kind of fighting, not at all civilised, no rules or methods behind the footwork, the desperate agility to avoid getting scratched or gutted, but it suits Sam, and he’s not sure how long it takes before Dean’s stepping back, hands up. Sam’s still crouching, it takes him a second to realise that Dean’s calling time, and he watches as Dean stands there, waiting, until Sam lifts his own hands up. 

“I think you got me,” Dean says, and turns around, tries to look over his shoulder at his back. “Can you see anything?” 

There’s a tear in Dean’s shirt, in the space between his shoulder-blades, and as Sam steps closer, he sees a line of white skin, a centimetre of raised red skin, where small drops of blood are trying to push their way out of Dean’s skin. Sam presses his thumb against the scratch, hears Dean hiss, and shows his brother the smeared blood. 

“Got you,” Sam says, and Dean turns around, shrugs. 

“Wanna keep going?” Dean asks. 

Sam tries not to look too deeply into his brother’s eyes, unsure of what he’ll find there. “No,” he says after a second. “I’m good. We should get to White Swan.”


	4. Troisième Partie

White Swan’s small and they don’t want to stay in town, so Dean takes 220 out past Wesley Road. They find a nice, quiet motel tucked into the hills, run for hikers, if the brochures and maps in the lobby are anything to go by; Sam gets them a room and they bring their duffels and the laptop, Sam’s notes, into the room, get everything set up. Dean kicks off his boots and opens the window while Sam’s plugging in the computer and comparing one of the maps from the lobby with his hand-drawn maps. 

“There’re a couple places we can start,” Sam says, fifteen minutes later. “And we still have some daylight to work with now; we could check out one, maybe two of these places before sunset.” 

Dean looks out of the window, down at his shoes, and sits on the edge of one of the beds, puts his boots back on. 

\--

Nothing in the first two places and the sun’s hitting the first edges of the Cascades when they finish up at the second cave, get back to the Impala. Sam’s tired, sweaty, and his feet hurt; it’s been a while since they’ve done this much hiking over rough terrain. He sits down in the car with a relieved sigh, yawns before he can hold it back or hide it. 

Dean looks over and snickers, says, “Tired, princess?” 

“Fuck off,” Sam replies, but there’s no heat to the words. “Think there’s a place to get something to eat around here?” 

Dean starts the car up, turns back onto the road and points them in the direction of the small town. “I think I saw a pizza place. We could get a couple to go, take ‘em back to the motel.” 

It’s half a question, not so much a suggestion as a thought-process, but it sounds good to Sam. He says as much, adds, “Feel like I could sleep for a week,” and could almost kick himself when Dean’s giving him a concerned look, worried. “Still trying to catch up, I think,” Sam says, before Dean can ask. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna flip out or anything.” 

“I’ll hold you to that,” Dean says. 

He doesn’t coddle Sam, never has, but keeps a closer eye on Sam that night than usual, fussing when Sam only eats four pieces of pizza, fussing when Sam doesn’t take more than a five minute shower, fussing when Sam picks up the computer instead of going straight to bed. 

It’s a measure of how tired Sam is that he doesn’t mind, doesn’t argue or say anything, just lets Dean take the laptop from his hands half an hour later and turn out the light.

\--

Sam wakes up, biting his lower lip to keep from screaming. The acrid, metallic tang of blood fills his mouth and he looks over to see if he’s woken Dean up. Dean’s still asleep, making the light whuffing noises that mean he’s probably dreaming, and faint moonlight’s pouring in through the open window, limning the curve of Dean’s shoulders, neck, in silver. 

Mouth dry, Sam glances at the clock, realises that the morning pre-dawn light’s going to be streaming through the window in half an hour or so. He gets out of bed, shivering in the cool air, and walks over to the window, draws the curtains closed, seeing the first stripes of dark crimson streaking across the sky, and goes into the bathroom. Sam uses the toilet, washes his hands, and can’t believe Dean’s still asleep when he slips back into the room. 

Sam stands there a minute, trying to decide whether he should try and get back to sleep despite the vision pressing on the back of his mind or do research, and finally scribbles a note before he puts on socks, his sneakers, and a hoodie, grabs a key for the door and slides out of the room. Sam looks left, looks right, and starts jogging to the east, feet still aching from all of the hiking the day before, shoulders aching with the pressure of Ava. 

His feet pound on the asphalt, one then the other, over and over again, until he has his breathing regulated, timed to the movements of legs and feet, muscles stretching and relaxing. It takes a few minutes, longer than normal, before he can empty his mind, using physical exercise like meditation, until all that he’s focused on is the road in front of him, under his feet. It’s calming, running, something he’s always liked, never minded when their father used miles to punish him for misbehaving, for talking back, for never living up to Dean’s example. 

\--

Sam runs until he hits the far edge of White Swan, then turns around, the risen sun behind him, warming his neck and plastering curls of hair to his skin, and jogs back towards the motel. He can see the motel, about a mile away, when the pain in his head splits apart, and Sam drops to his knees there next to the state road, grabbing his temples, the pain from gravel digging into his knees and shins inconsequential next to the spirals of agony radiating out from his mind. 

The vision comes in flashes, split-second frames, the way they were when he started having them, not at all the way they’ve progressed into miniature films over the past couple of years. It’s too bright, too loud, and Sam can’t parse the things he’s seeing, the details being shoved in front of his eyes. 

A whimper escapes his lips, then another, but it’s almost as if the noise has released some of the pressure, because the vision seems to relax, come ‘round slower this time, taking its time as it shows him what his gift has picked up. 

When it’s done, when he can stand up again, Sam wavers on his feet, then jogs back to the motel, falling into a walk when he gets within half a mile, partly to cool down, partly because he feels shaky. He’s not at all surprised to see that Dean’s awake, has the door open, though the look on Dean’s face, the fact that Dean’s on the phone, has Sam raising an eyebrow, tired from more than just the run. 

“Thanks for the note,” Dean says, sarcasm colouring every word. “ _’Dean, back soon.’_ What the hell _is_ that, Sam?” 

Sam waves his hand, manages to make it to Dean’s bed, and sits heavily on the edge, grabbing the sheets to keep from falling off when he slides perilously close to the edge. 

Dean’s there, almost instantly, call forgotten and phone on the floor as he crouches in front of Sam, has his hands on Sam’s neck, holding Sam’s head up and trying to look in Sam’s eyes. “Hey,” he says, quiet and scared now. “I’m sorry, okay. What’s wrong? Talk to me here, Sam, tell me what’s going on.” 

“Is that Missouri?” Sam asks in response, nodding at the phone on the floor. 

“Yeah,” Dean says, slowly, letting go of Sam to pick up the phone. “How’d you,” he starts to ask, then stops, bites the question off. “You need to talk to her?” 

Sam holds his hand out for the phone, and the first thing he hears when he lifts it to his head, is, “Leave a better note next time.” Dean stands up, moves over to the window, folds his arms across his chest.

He pulls up a smile from somewhere deep inside, says, “Yes, ma’am. Sorry. Did you hear anything?” 

“I heard enough, Sam. How soon will they be here?” Missouri asks, voice tight and anxious, even through the crackling cellular connection. 

“Not for another five hours, at the earliest,” Sam replies, and he can see Dean stiffen out of the corner of his eyes, sees Dean turn and stare at him. “You’ve got time. I’ll give you a phone number to call, but you’re going to need to leave Lawrence unless you can put wards around the entire town.” 

She snorts, like he thought she might, and Sam says, “There’s a girl in Dallas. She’s someone we got to first, last summer. Her name’s Grace and she’s good with wards, even without her gift. She’ll be able to keep you protected and she might be able to help with Ava.” 

Missouri sighs and Sam makes the mistake of looking up. He sees Dean looking him over, catching the gravel on Sam’s pants that Sam hadn’t brushed off, and Sam adjusts the way he’s sitting, but not quickly enough, because Dean’s eyes flick to Sam’s shoulders, first the right, then the left. 

“Sam, baby, what’s going on up there?” Missouri asks. 

Rather than answer, Sam gives her Grace’s number from memory, tells her how to get to Grace’s house near the cultural district, and hangs up. He looks at Dean and rolls his eyes, says, “Go ahead.” 

Like he’d been waiting for it, Dean says, “First, wake me up next time. I might not be able to match you stride for stride, but I can keep up with you and you know it. Second, what the hell were you thinking, going out for a run after everything you’ve been through lately and knowing we’ll be spending the rest of the day hiking and trying to find, then _kill_ , a dragon? And third, what the fuck’s going on?” 

“One of the demon’s kids did some scrying,” Sam says, answering the easier question. Dean doesn’t say anything, so Sam goes on, adds, “They found Ava, narrowed it down to Lawrence, and it’s not like they’ll spend time combing the city when they know about Missouri’s connection to our family. She’s got five hours to get out, Ava with her, or they’ll be showing up at her doorstep.” 

Dean clenches his teeth; Sam gives his brother time to accept the fact that they’re too far away to help, and then says, more quietly, “I had a vision last night, while I was asleep. That’s why I was up so early. There’s a psychic on the other side of the country who’s going to turn someone to ice in three days, then let them melt in the sun.” 

“We have to,” Dean starts to say. 

Sam cuts him off, says, “We can’t. Dean, we’re here to get our father back. If we have to let someone die, if we can’t help Missouri and Ava, that’s the price. We can’t be in three places at once and this is no coincidence, you know that, you _know_ that. The demon already got to the psychic; we’ll take care of him later, once we get Dad back, and we can trust Grace to take care of Missouri and Ava. But we’re here for Dad. No one else is.” 

Dean opens his mouth, closes it again, and Sam watches his brother’s eyes close off, turn stormy. “I don’t like it,” Dean says. 

“I know. Neither do I. But this is the choice I’ve made.” Sam pauses, then says, “If you’d rather.” 

“Fuck, no,” Dean says, cutting Sam off. “I’m not leaving you alone. Not now, not ever.” 

Even in the middle of this, hearing Dean say that makes Sam’s blood hum in his veins.

\--

After a quick breakfast, half-stale donuts and pop tarts bought the day before on the drive down to White Swan, they head out for the next possible location of the _zmey_. Dean’s driving, blasting out a mix of his favourite power ballads, and Sam’s trying to focus on the music and not his thoughts. He can handle the Zeppelin, complains about Metallica occasionally, and has a deep-seated hatred he’s never voiced for Motorhead, but the power ballads are something else entirely, hair-band after hair-band after hair-band. 

They’d usually have him smiling and staring out of the window biting his lower lip until it bled to keep from laughing, and Sam knows Dean put the tape in to cheer them both up, but it’s just not working, not when Sam remembers what they’re doing, where they’re going, why they’re here and not somewhere else. Dean doesn’t look much better, hands tight around the steering wheel, foot a little too heavy on the gas pedal. 

\--

The first cave on the list is a wash, as are the second and the third, though Dean finds some interesting remains of what must have been an excellent party in the third one, beer bottles and cigarette butts scattered over the floor, chalk and spray paint on the stone, sweet smell of marijuana lingering in the air. Dean says something about kids these days that has Sam snorting and rolling his eyes, and Dean grins, teeth bright in the beam of Sam’s flashlight. 

“Next?” Sam asks, once they’re on their way back to the car, blinking in the sunlight. His feet ache, but he feels better than he did a few hours ago, as if doing something, taking some action, even if it’s not getting them any closer to the _zmey_ , is making progress of sorts. 

“Or lunch,” Dean says. “It’s up to you.” 

Sam looks up at the sky, takes out his phone and checks the time, and looks at his brother while he says, “I think I can handle one more before I’ll need to take a break.” 

Dean hums, reaches inside and pulls out their water bottles, throws one across the top of the car to Sam. They drink for a moment, long pulls of water to stay hydrated, get some fluid back in them after sweating all morning, and Dean finally wipes his mouth off with the back of his hand and says, “Yeah, okay. One more.”

Sam uses the bottom of his shirt to wipe his mouth off, then his forehead, and they head off for the next cave. 

\--

This cave looks deep, even from the outside, and darker than the others they’ve explored. Sam looks at Dean, who looks back, and they have a silent conversation; this time, when they start moving inside, they’re holding guns as well as flashlights. Sam’s is loaded with silver, Dean’s with hollow-tipped iron, filled with Holy Water, and a shiver goes down Sam’s spine when he sees Dean click the safety off, goosebumps forming as he mirrors the action with his own weapon. 

Dean stalks ahead first, Sam following, covering their exit, and when Dean pauses, Sam looks around his brother, sees the cave split just in front of them. 

“Which way?” Sam asks, murmuring as quietly as he can; the sound still echoes off of the rocks. 

“Was gonna ask you,” Dean replies, just as quietly. “Feel like I need breadcrumbs or something. Wanna pull a minotaur?”

Sam looks between the two paths, right and left, and feels an ache in each shoulder. “Let’s try the right,” he says. 

Dean nods in response, and takes off down the right path, flashlight sweeping back and forth across the narrower tunnel, barrel of his gun following the sweeps. Sam keeps an eye on where they’ve just come from, and as he’s looking behind, Dean stops, Sam stopping the next instant, attuned to Dean’s motions. 

“I’m clear,” Sam whispers, then puts his back against the wall, waiting for Dean to do the same. When he does, Sam looks around his brother, sees why Dean stopped, feels his eyes going wide. 

The tunnel they’re in opens into a much larger room, and it’s lit by a fire in the corner, smoke disappearing up through cracks in the rock. There’s a pile of gold to the other side, shining, light from the fire bouncing off each piece of jewellery, each coin. 

“Fuck,” Sam whispers, eyes darting around, taking in everything. He pauses, though, when he realises that it’s only gold, nothing else, no gemstones, no silver, and, more importantly, no egg. Still, the tunnel continues on the other side of his chamber, and there’s the faintest hint of light coming from that direction. 

Sam steps forward, softly, though he’s getting a vibe that something’s wrong about all of this, that something is going to go drastically wrong if they don’t wait, if they don’t see something first. He stops, holds Dean back, and looks around again, closer. Now that he’s trying to find something wrong, now that he’s one step closer to the cave, he sees a perch in the corner nearest to them and his eyes run over the bird sitting there, the plumed feathers, the woman’s face staring right back at him. 

“Oh, shit,” Sam says, recognising the bird from one of the books back in their motel room. Dean asks what’s going on, why Sam said that, but then the bird tilts her head and stares right at them. Sam’s frozen, staring back, his eyes locked to hers, and she smiles, begins to sing. Sam hears a roar coming from deeper in the cave and he runs, clueless, until he’s outside and the sun’s beating down on his head. 

“What the fuck was that?” he hears, and looks at the guy next to him, just as out of breath, holding a gun just like he is. 

Sam shakes his head, tries to figure out how he knows what his name is but not the man’s name that he’s with, and as one second turns into sixty, it comes back, not like a flood, but gradually drifting, like the tide coming in, until he remembers everything. 

“ _Damn_ ,” Dean says, shaking his head as if he has water in his ears. “Okay, that was strange. What the hell kind of bird was that?” 

“An _alkonost_ ,” Sam replies after a moment, after he’s looked back at the cave, figured that the _zmey_ isn’t following them out, tucked the gun into his jeans. “It’s sort of like the _vila_ or the sirens—its song makes people forget things, everything, when they hear it. I think we’re lucky we remembered so quickly.”

Dean scuffs the toe of his boot in the dirt, swearing fluidly under his breath. “Great. Just great. As if the fucking dragon wasn’t bad enough, right? We’ll have to find some way around the damned thing.” 

“Let me hit the books,” Sam says after a minute of watching Dean bring himself back under control. “Maybe we’ll be able to find something.” 

\--

There aren’t any books to hit; Sam stole texts about Russian myths, not Slavic, and between this and the _cikavac_ egg, Sam’s ready to admit that maybe he should’ve been a little less specific in his theft. Still, they have an internet connection and Wikipedia’s useful as ever, giving Sam basic information on the bird but no tips on how to ignore one or get past one. 

He keeps searching, does some cross-checking, and finally says, “Fire, maybe?” 

Dean, sitting in a chair in front of the open doorway, filling out a crossword, looks up, drags the chair back to the desk, throws the paper to one side. “What about fire?” 

“ _Alkonosts_ are named after the goddess Alcyone, whose husband died in a shipwreck,” Sam says, rubbing his temples, feeling his head pound. “Greek demi-goddess, actually, but. Anyway, she threw herself into the sea and the gods turned her into a kingfisher. Maybe if we took fire with us,” and he trails off, knows that Dean remembers the fire burning in the cave just as much as he does. 

“Natural opposite to water,” Dean says. “It might work. But this isn’t the goddess, it’s a bird.” Dean pauses, and Sam knows what his brother’s thinking just as much he is: this isn’t much at all to go on, and if it doesn’t work, they might not get their memories back so quickly the next time. “D’you have any other ideas?” 

Sam leans back, tips his head back and stares at the ceiling. He scratches his chin, feels stubble, realises he needs to shave. “Not one, and this isn’t even an idea so much as a, as a desperate hope, maybe? If I had better books, or the time to take a trip to the nearest college library, there’d be something.” Dean doesn’t say anything, and the silence stretches on long enough that Sam finally says, “Maybe only one of us should go in. Just in case.”

“We go in together,” Dean says firmly. “And we’ll go after you take a nap.” Sam tilts his head, looks at his brother, and Dean exhales sharply, rolling his eyes. “Dude. Sleep. You look like one of Romero’s zombies, and that is _not_ a compliment.” 

\--

Sam wakes up a few hours later, shivering with cold though it’s warm and bright, the sun still high in the mid-afternoon sky. His body aches, sore all over with phantom pain in his shoulders, his fingers, across the skin of his throat. Dean’s nowhere to be found and Sam looks out, doesn’t see the Impala. There is a note on the table, though, and Sam’s lips quirk up despite the tightness of his muscles, the too-small feeling of his skin. _’Sam, back soon,’_ is all it says, as much for information as it is fair turn-about from Sam’s own note, that morning. 

He texts Dean, tells his brother not to hurry, and gets in the shower, letting cold water wake him up before he twists the dial and lets warmer water rinse the shivers and tenseness away. Sam stands there, eyes closed, until he hears movement in the room and Dean calls out to say that he’s back. The water, never that warm to begin with, has gone tepid, and Sam’s skin crawls when he turns the water off and catches a glimpse of something red and orange in the mass of droplets on the side of the shower. He looks harder, deeper, trying to push his gift without going too far, but all he can see, still, are the colours, and it’s made his headache come back. 

Sam dries and dresses quickly, comes out of the bathroom and sees Dean poking at the laptop. “Hey,” Sam says, and Dean closes the computer, nods in the direction of the nightstand and the bag of fast food sitting there. 

“Got you something to eat,” Dean says. “Thought you might be hungry.” 

It’s a question more than anything, one determined to see how Sam’s feeling; no appetite usually means he needs hours more sleep and a complete cessation of using his gift, if possible. Sam swallows down acid and smiles his thanks, makes a show of eating the chicken burger and a handful of fries, ignoring how every bite makes him want to throw up. He can’t finish the food but he’s made a good dent, and Dean doesn’t do more than sigh when Sam bends down to tie his shoelaces. 

“So, fire,” Dean says. “How’re we gonna do that? Old-school flaming brands? Molotov cocktails?” 

“We’re not trying to set the _alkonost_ on fire, Dean,” Sam answers with a huff. 

Dean grins, wide and bright; seeing it makes Sam’s breath skip a beat. “Well, good. Because I don’t want to waste any Jack on some damned bird.” He waits for Sam to say anything, and when Sam doesn’t, Dean’s eyes turn dark, shadowed. “Sam.” 

“We’re on the side of the Cascades,” Sam says, cutting his brother off. “Plenty of trees.” 

Dean doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t get in Sam’s way when Sam picks up a hoodie and slides it on over his head, even though it’s warm. 

Sam’s cold, feels like his insides are turning to ice, and as he brushes past Dean to get to the Impala, he thinks of a psychic in South Carolina, who just found out he could freeze things. 

\--

This time there’s no need for flashlights. Dean goes in first, carrying a thick piece of tree-branch, ripped from one of the myriad numbers of fir trees dotting this part of the country, stripped of needles, one end burning and leaving a cloying smell of evergreen smoke wafting above them, trapped in the tunnel. He’s also got a gun, filled with tranquiliser darts, and Sam’s carrying a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, Dean’s other gun, complete with iron bullets, tucked into the back of his jeans. 

They’re hoping the fire will distract the _alkonost_ long enough for Dean to tranq the bird, then get past it and to the _zmey_ and the _cikavac_ egg. Sam almost thinks it’s going to work; they get into the room and Dean’s a millisecond away from shooting the bird, but then it starts singing, and Sam’s world goes black. 

\--

Sam wakes up, shifts, and freezes when he registers the arm thrown across his side, fingers draped against his skin, feels sick to his stomach when he realises that he _knows_ the feel of those callused fingertips. 

The room stinks of sweat and sex, and if he’d woken up in the bed by himself, he would have assumed they’d gone out drinking the night before and Dean had brought a girl back. As it stands, he has a horrible feeling about all of this. 

“Dean?” he asks, quiet, throat working before he can get his brother’s name out. “Dean, wake up.” 

“Mrph.” 

Sam lets out a nervous laugh, says, “ _Dean_ , come on,” and when Dean starts to move behind him, Sam stays perfectly still.

He can almost tell the moment Dean’s awake enough to realise that they’re both naked, in the same bed, and spooning, because Dean stops for a split-second, then tumbles off of the bed. “Sam? What the hell’s going on?” 

“I don’t know,” Sam says, and he doesn’t move until he hears Dean’s jeans being zipped up, hears Dean put on a t-shirt. He sits up, sheet pulled up on his waist, and surveys the room, sees beer bottles and pizza boxes on the table, their clothes scattered all over the place, weapons bags open with guns and knives taken out of their cases, moved around. “What’s the last thing you remember?” 

Dean scrunches up his nose in thought, finally says, “It’s blurry. There was a cave, I think?” 

Sam nods, catches a glimpse of a piece of paper on the floor next to the bed, and leans down to pick it up. “ _Alkonost_ ,” he says, and looks up at Dean. It clicks in almost instantly, the dragon, the cave, the singing, but everything between hearing the first few notes to two minutes ago is gone, like it never even happened. 

“The _alkonost_ ,” Sam says, and he sees understanding dawn in Dean’s eyes. “The cave, the _zmey_ , the damned egg for Baba Yaga.”

“What do you think,” Dean begins to say, then stops, abrupt, as if he doesn’t want to finish the question because he’s not sure he’d want to hear Sam’s answer. 

Sam doesn’t blame him, feels about the same, but he says, “Maybe we just ran back here, were too tired to do more than sleep, and our clothes were filthy.” 

Dean takes that in, looks as if he’s thinking about it, and while Sam’s fishing around for a pair of jeans to put on, or at least some boxers, Dean’s booting up the laptop. Sam’s not watching his brother, but then Dean makes one small sound, high, in the back of his throat, and Sam looks up, one leg in his jeans, one out, and says, “What is it?” 

“What day did we go to the cave?” Dean asks. 

Sam frowns, says, “The twelfth, I think. Late on the twelfth. Why?” 

There’s a long pause, long enough for Sam to pull his jeans on the rest of the way, zip up, and walk over to where Dean’s looking at the laptop. Sam peers over his shoulder and freezes. 

“That says it’s the sixteenth,” he whispers, eyes wide. “Even if we didn’t get back here until early on the thirteenth.” 

“Three days,” Dean says. 

Neither of them quite remembers how to breathe.

\--

They pack everything up in a hurry; not too sure what’s happened, it’s safer to leave than to stay. Neither of them look at the bed or mention the smell, though Dean does leave a window open and Sam straightens the sheets, paling at a couple of spots that are stiff and crackly. For the first hour after they’re awake, leaving the motel room and sitting in a diner, Sam can’t look at his brother without wondering, and, judging by the way Dean’s acting, hyper-manic and flirting with everything in a skirt, Dean’s feeling the same way. 

Still, an hour later, it’s as if they’ve made a silent resolution not to mention it and moved on. Sam’s trying to keep Dean focused on how they’re supposed to go in and grab the egg Baba Yaga wants, failing miserably as the waitress keeps coming back to check up on them. 

Finally, Sam snaps and hisses, “The more you flirt with her, the more time we’re taking to figure this out, the more time Dad’s trapped in hell.” 

That gets Dean to shut up, and quick. Sam feels guilt curl thick and anxious in his belly but he doesn’t take it back, doesn’t apologise. It is the truth, after all. 

\--

They argue and bicker about how to get past the _alkonost_ for three hours, ensconced at the local library surrounded by books that aren’t much help. Dean’s insistent that ear-plugs and ear-muffs will work. Sam’s sceptical. 

Dean wants to settle it rock-paper-scissors, but Sam says, “Dean, you always pick scissors, so no. We can try it, but,” and he trails off, silently reminding Dean about the way they woke up that morning, that they have no memory of the past three days. 

“Look, it worked for Odysseus, right? It’ll work for us. Better plan than anything else either of us can come up with. Ear plugs and something over that, to keep them in, and we’ll give it another go,” Dean says. “Or I will; you can wait outside if you want, just in case.” 

“If you’re sure, then no,” Sam says. “I’m coming in with you. Once we get past the _alkonost_ , there’s still the damn dragon to deal with.” 

Dean snickers, says, “Dragons. Still funny,” and stands up, heads for the stairs. 

Sam glances over the books on the table, thumps _The Odyssey,_ mumbles, “Homer, don’t fail me now,” and follows his brother.

\--

The earplugs work, and when Dean lifts his gun to shoot the _alkonost_ , Sam doesn’t stop him. She looks almost triumphant, as if she got something out of this, and Sam thinks back to Wikipedia, thinks about how the _alkonost_ , unlike sirens, unlike _vila_ , is a good being, divine, the earthly expression of God’s plan, and as Dean shoots, as the _alkonost_ dies with a bullet in the middle of her forehead, blood leaking out from around the edges of the wound, Sam wonders about God’s will, how any of this fits in with anyone’s destiny. 

“Come on,” Dean mutters, the words bouncing off the fire burning in the corner, off of the gold piled high against the walls. “We can get the dragon now.” 

‘Getting the dragon’ is almost anti-climactic after the past week. They’ve brought saws, guns, and the ingredients for Molotov cocktails with them, and they both kneel at the edge of the dragon’s lair to get ready. Dean’s got a gun in one hand and a hacksaw in the other, looks ready to do some serious damage to the _zmey_. Sam loads one arm with makeshift Molotov cocktails, five or six in small glass bottles, ready for lighting, more like incendiary bombs than anything else, and fills his pockets with good-sized rocks. 

With a deep breath from each of them, they go in, fast and silent; on the way, Sam points at the egg and they both note its position. Dean shoots the centre of each of the dragon’s head, which disorients it enough for him to cut one of the heads off. Sam follows, shoves a cocktail down the dragon’s throat and lights it before running for the next headless opening. Just as he’s planting and lighting the second cocktail, just as Dean’s hacking away at the third head, he throws a rock at the first one, hears it explode, looks over and sees the _zmey_ ’s flesh char almost instantly. 

They’d been worried that maybe they’d need serious fire, not just the cocktails, to scorch the flesh and discourage heads from growing back, but seeing the first one work settles some doubt, some fear, inside Sam, and he ends up helping Dean saw away at the third head after another couple of rocks break the glass of the second one and it explodes, showering them with chunks of dragon-flesh and blood. 

“Oh, that is _so_ gross,” Dean mutters, and he ends up lighting the cocktail after Sam shoves it in, grin on his face half-obscured by the mess that blowing up the dragon’s created. 

Sam carves openings into other parts of the dragon’s body, a couple spots in its belly, one along the spinal cord, and when Dean drops lit cocktails into the wounds, they both run back towards the other cavern, Dean scooping up the _cikavac_ egg, still unhatched, looking unharmed. 

Dean looks over at Sam, exhilaration lighting up his face, and Sam’s mouth goes dry, seeing it. It’s a feeling he has as well, with adrenaline and excitement pumping through his veins, feeling the ache in his hands from weapons and knowing he could have died inside. He’d never enjoyed hunting as much as Dean did, still doesn’t; for Sam, the comedown is the worst part. It makes him feel alive in a way nothing else can, and that terrifies him, especially now, knowing that the demon wants him, wants his gifts, and the high of the hunt, the rush of killing the enemy and surviving to fight another day, might be one more weakness for the demon to exploit. 

The fact that he wants it, that he wishes he could live in the moment and for the moment as much as Dean does, it makes him ache sometimes. It makes him ache now, in a manner beyond the pain of his visions, beyond the pain of using his gift on the other children, because Dean loves it and is beautiful in his love of it, and Sam’s too afraid of, of everything, he thinks. 

The _zmey_ ’s flailing so much that it sets off the last cocktails, and the explosions start a chain reaction that has the cave shaking, small clumps of dirt and pieces of rock falling to the ground. The cave holds, though, and when Sam looks back into the dragon’s lair, all he can see is ash, all he can smell is blood. 

Both he and Dean are dirty, covered in little bits of dragon-skin and flesh, carrying a few burn marks from the Molotov cocktails, their skin and clothes coated over with blood, the thick, pungent liquid looking more black than crimson, starting to dry in clumps on them almost immediately.

Sam coughs, nearly chokes and gags, but when Dean moves toward him, he holds up a hand. “I’m fine, really. Let’s just. Let’s just get out of here.” 

Dean shrugs, and when they walk through the main cavern, they both scoop up small handfuls of gold, nothing serious but enough to pawn, get them some money that should, if they do things right and don’t get caught, keep them in a good enough position for the next few months to avoid credit card scams and serious hustling. 

“Man, I love blowing shit up,” Dean says, once they’re outside, the sun still in the sky but an hour away from setting, clouds coming in and leaving shadows on the ground. “Nothing like it. Would’ve been cooler to use dynamite, though. That’s a gallon of gas wasted, and it’s damn expensive these days.” 

Sam doesn’t say anything. Dean’s grin falters. 

\--

They’re both filthy but they never got another motel room earlier, went straight from the diner to the cave, and no one’s going to rent a room to them with them looking like this now, so Dean lays down towels on the Impala’s seats while Sam wraps the _cikavac_ egg in old clothes and sets it carefully into a duffel emptied for the occasion. Dean bitches about the clothes just lying in the trunk, but it’s light-hearted, nothing serious. They wipe the worst of the mess off, then change, but Sam’s hands and arms are covered in dried blood, pulling his skin. It makes him think of Chrissie, though he doesn’t know why, not now, not like this. 

Dean drives west, further into the Cascades, back towards the ocean, until they find a pond that looks deserted, big enough and safe enough to clean up in. Sam gathers up clean clothes for himself, and by the time he’s done, he hears Dean splashing in the water, so he rolls his eyes and gets clothes for Dean, too. 

The water’s cold but it does the job; Dean dunks him a few times but the blood washes off and it’s still warm enough that the goosebumps from air-on-wet-skin are half-welcome. Sam scrubs at his arms and face, using some of the wider-leaved weeds for assistance, and it’s not until they’re broken and raw, like green egg yolks floating on the surface of the water that he realises. Chrissie and blood, covered in it— it’s like the time she bathed in the blood of a child and summoned a demon, like when he killed her, like when he drew a knife across her throat and held her as she died, like all of the other people he saw her kill in his visions. 

Sam turns his back to Dean and swallows, but can’t stop himself, can’t hold it back, so he pulls himself half on the bank and turns his head, vomits up brunch until he feels empty. Dean’s right there, one hand on Sam’s shoulder, the other holding Sam’s hair back and out of his face, and when Sam’s done, trying to catch his breath through the taste in his mouth, Dean asks, “Better now?” 

Sam doesn’t trust his voice but he answers anyway. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry.” 

“Dude, whatever,” Dean replies, instantly. “Nothing to be sorry about. Let’s get moving, all right?” 

Sam stands up, dries off a little with one of the less dirty towels, dresses, and doesn’t look at Dean. He hears Dean, though; Dean’s carrying on a one-sided conversation, wondering out loud where they should stop for the night, where the next search will take them, whether or not there’ll be any worthwhile pussy in the next town, the next bar. 

It’s comforting, to some degree, knowing that Dean’s right there, but Sam’s feeling claustrophobic in his skin, needs space and air and nobody around for miles, doesn’t trust himself. When the only things left to grab are his weapons, Sam picks them up and thrusts them at Dean, taking Dean’s dirty clothes and towels in exchange, heading back to the car before Dean can say anything. 

\--

They decide to drive north, head up a few miles to Yakima, bigger city where they might have a chance of fading into the tourist background. The sun’s setting over the mountains, and Sam puts on his sunglasses, looks over at the tree-line. His eyes get stuck on Dean. 

It’s like he’s never looked at Dean before. It might be the way the sun’s hitting his brother, highlighting the curves of Dean’s face, the angles of his cheekbones, the dusting of freckles over the bridge of Dean’s nose, hiding under sunglasses, but something’s different. He’s seeing Dean differently now, the way Dean drives with one elbow on the door, arm pressed against glass, other loosely curled around the steering wheel, one foot keeping time while Dean’s head nods back and forth in an echoing rhythm. 

When Sam realises that he’s staring, trying to figure out how to turn the collar of Dean’s jacket down so he can study the planes of Dean’s neck, he swallows, turns away, looks out of his window. He hears Dean turn his head, glance in his direction, can feel Dean’s eyes rest on him for a split-second, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t move, so Dean turns back to watch the road. 

He wishes he could blame it on the egg they have in the back, wrapped in eight layers of cloth and a duffel, nestled on the floor behind Sam’s chair, boxed in with dirty laundry and books so it can’t move, wishes he could blame whatever he’s feeling now on the _alkonost_ or his gift or some odd method the demon’s using to tear the two of them apart, but he can’t. Blaming it on anything else would be a lie, Sam knows that, just as he knows, hollow in the pit of his stomach, that what he’s feeling now, it’s the same thing he’s felt for years. He’s just aware of it now. 

He wonders about Dean, what Dean thinks or feels or has guessed, but he swallows again, focuses on the scenery flying by outside, and tries not to think of anything. 

\--

The motel room they get is dingy, old and decorated in shades of brown, but the mattresses are firm and the water in the bathroom runs hot in a matter of seconds. They’ve had worse and Sam knows it, but he’d been irrationally hoping for something with colour, something to distract him from thoughts of Chrissie, thoughts of Ava, thoughts of Dean. 

Dean leaves Sam to set up the laptop and ward the room while he runs out and gets food, and Sam leans in the doorway and watches the Impala drive off with something approaching relief. His realisations, they might be nothing more than that, something he’s known for years but never admitted to himself, or they might be new, but trying to think about them or ignore them with Dean there, it’s impossible. 

Sam breathes lighter, easier, and lays out salt lines and runes quickly, but efficiently, hoping Dean takes his time and knowing Dean won’t. Sam sits on the edge of one bed while the laptop boots up, hunches forward and rests his chin on his hands, staring at the window. 

He’s going crazy. He knows he is, between their race with the demon and this hunt, in the middle of trying to keep everything compartmentalised without forgetting anything, attempting to hold back the next stage of his gift’s evolution, trying to pretend that he’s all right and not worry Dean anymore than he already has. 

Now, with their mission two-thirds done and one item left to find, he’s got to wrap his mind around the possibility that he and Dean have had sex that neither of them remember and the possibility, even more disturbing, that maybe he wouldn’t mind doing it again, this time knowing they’d both remember it in the morning. To know that the way he feels about Dean now is the way he’s felt about Dean for years, it makes him wonder if he’s wanted to—his mind shies away from thinking the words ‘fuck’ or ‘make love’—sleep with Dean since, since they’ve been back on the road, since before Stanford and Jess, since he was old enough to look at Dean and apply thoughts about beauty and lethality to the same person. 

He wonders, again, what Dean thinks, and knows he can’t ask his older brother, not about this, can’t even mention it. Sam sighs, stands up, hears his ankles pop, twists and lets his shoulders and back crack, and then sits down in front of the laptop. 

He’s just pulled up Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Mythica site when he hears the Impala rumble to a stop outside the room, sees the glare of the headlights through thin, dirt-brown curtains, bright and jarring, until Dean turns them off. No point in getting started, so Sam pushes the computer to one side and turns the television on to some high-numbered cable channel, kicks his legs out and waits. 

Dean comes in carrying a brown paper bag in each hand, and he unloads them both on to the table, laying out Styrofoam containers of burgers and fries, one of salad, a six-pack and a bottle of Jack Daniels, as well as three pieces of pie. 

“Paws off the pie,” Dean says, sitting down into the other chair with a thump, freezing when it creaks, relaxing when it doesn’t fall to pieces underneath him. Despite himself, Sam can’t help smiling and reaching for the pie first. Dean smacks Sam’s hand, then says, almost defensively, “I said paws off, little brother. I like pie more than you do. You get one piece, and consider yourself a lucky man. Get any research done?”

Sam shakes his head, picks onions off of one of the burgers and throws them into Dean’s container, snagging Dean’s pickle in trade. He smells raspberries, but the pie’s apple and cherry when he looks. 

“Just got the laptop open when you came back.” Something about the way he sounds, the way he answered that, has Dean looking at him, one eyebrow raised, and Sam cuts Dean off before Dean even opens his mouth. “See any place to shoot some pool?” 

Dean tilts his head, takes a huge bite of his burger, and answers with his mouth full. “Yeah, Sam. Sure. Once we’re done eating?” 

“And after we’ve showered and found a laundromat,” Sam adds. He laughs, feeling better about things, when Dean just wrinkles his nose and takes a bite of pie. 

\--

There’s a laundromat right next to the bar Dean’s picked out; of course, Sam thinks, Dean didn’t remember the laundromat but he did see the poster in the bar’s window detailing the drink specials for the weekend. The neon on both places is half-gone and the lights inside of the laundromat are buzzing, flickering, harsh on Sam’s eyes. 

Dean’s sitting on the counter swinging his feet and watching as Sam separates whites, colours, and filthy, and shoves quarters into three washing machines. Clothes get shoved in next, almost too full for the machines, and it’s like every other time that Sam mutters something about not going as long between loads next time, because Dean comes back with a statement about ‘loads’ that has Sam rolling his eyes. 

Clothes in, they head next door, and Sam sips at his beer while Dean chases shots down with his. There’s a pool table in the corner, dartboard on the other wall, and a baseball game on the old television above the bar; Sam can’t tell which teams are playing and doesn’t care who’s winning. Instead, he’s watching everyone else in the bar eye Dean, as if Dean’s the unknowable variant in this equation. Sam knows that’s wrong, that’s not true, that Dean doesn’t hide anything and that Sam’s the infinitely more dangerous one with gifts no one, least of all himself, understands, but he just watches as the women’s eyes linger on Dean’s crotch and the men take in the casual, predatory air Dean wraps around him like a blanket. 

It doesn’t take long before they’re forgotten, relegated to the furniture, and something in Dean’s shoulders relaxes at the same instant as Sam’s. Dean swallows down the rest of his beer and gets another; Sam shakes his head and smiles when the woman behind the bar raises an eyebrow at him. There’s a game already going at the pool table, so Dean gets the darts from the bartender and tilts his head in invitation; Sam’s lips curve, and it’s on. 

They’re playing a game of ‘Round the Clock,’ something their father taught them when they were both old enough to know which way to throw the pointy end of the darts. Dean always wondered where John picked the game up, and Sam had always said it was probably a holdover from his military days, but it's good practice for accuracy and taught Sam how to negotiate the angles of throwing knives, so he’s always liked playing. 

After the ninth throw, Sam picks his darts off of the board and turns, pauses mid-motion before walking back behind Dean, leaving Dean to have an open shot at the board. They have an audience, a quiet but definitely interested one, and one of the guys watching them has a tattoo high on his arm, shirtsleeve brushing over the ink when he moves. It’s an anchor, with the name of a ship underneath, and when Sam’s eyes move from the obvious Navy tattoo to the man’s eyes, he swallows. They’re yellow. 

The man grins, wide and toothy, and holds up his bottle of beer, drops of water sliding down the neck and onto the man’s hands. He mouths some words at Sam, then winks and slams the rest of his beer back, leaving the bottle on the bar before he steps out of the front door. 

‘ _I’m counting on you, kid. Bring me my firebird._ ’

Sam’s frozen, staring, but he forces himself to turn, to watch as Dean’s darts land right where they’re supposed to, one after the other after the other, and when Dean’s gathered his darts up, Sam stands on the line and aims, throws, mechanically. 

\--

Neither of them win but the guys around them nod when they take the darts back to the bartender, nod and leave them alone, as if Sam and Dean have proved something, answered some unspoken question. Sam’s skin is crawling, he can’t shake the sensation, and then he feels a vision like starbursts forming behind his eyes. 

“I’m gonna go switch the clothes,” Sam finally says, leaning over and yelling in Dean’s ear. Dean looks up at him and Sam pushes out a smile, as if to say that someone has to do it. Dean frowns, starts to get up, but Sam says, “I’ll be right back,” and leaves before Dean can argue. 

He’s putting the third load of laundry into a dryer when the door clanks open and he smells sulfur. Sam doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause, just finishes, and when he’s done, turned the dryer on, he straightens up and looks into the eyes of the demon. 

“Wasting time, aren’t you?” the demon asks, sounds friendly, almost concerned. “Been a couple weeks since we last talked, Sam, and I haven’t heard anything from you, so I got worried, thought I’d check up on you, make sure you were still alive. Imagine my surprise, finding you and Dean up here drinking while dear old Dad’s screaming to wake the dead down in hell.” 

Sam doesn’t flinch, doesn’t react at all, because he’s not sure what kinds of words would come out of his mouth, not with this pressure behind his eyes. 

The demon looks almost gleeful about that, and Sam’s tongue darts out to wet suddenly-dry lips. “Nothing to say at all?” it asks. “Here I am, talking about your father, and you don’t have anything to say? No,” the demon says, slowly, considering, “Dean was always the one to snap at that, wasn’t he? I’ll have to find something else, then. Like your little friend, Missouri. Or even darling Ava. Any of my children, Sam. And then there’s you, fighting it every step of the way.” 

The demon steps forward, closer, until Sam can smell its breath, sulfur and rotten meat, and the demon whispers in the space between them. “Fighting it and losing, aren’t you, Sam? How’s that vision shaping up, hmm? What about the hunts you’ve been on? I can smell your fear, Sam—fear of what, I wonder? Just remember, you’re _mine_ , and I don’t give up things that belong to me.” 

Sam’s head fills with pain as the demon’s eyes swirl, and he drops to his knees right there, clutching his temples. The demon lays one hand on his head, jagged nails digging into Sam’s scalp, and, to Sam’s horror, the pain helps focus the vision, until Sam’s aware of two things only, the demon above him and the vision inside of him, wailing in his head to come out. 

“Tell me, Sam,” the demon murmurs, bending down, tightening its hold on Sam’s head. “Tell me what you see. It’ll go easier, won’t hurt as much.” 

“No,” Sam gasps, squeezing his eyes closed. “No. Never.” 

Pain on his face to match the pain in his head, but then the vision comes and nothing else matters, seeing a rush of faces and landscapes before the vision settles on a checked blue curtain, fluttering in the wind. The smell of pie, drifting out from an open window, and the sound of farm equipment in the distance, the barking of dogs closer, and then the house explodes in a burst of lightning, sound leaving a name in the back of Sam’s mind. 

Sam rocks on his knees, and reaches out and up, fingers curling on one of the washing machines. He pulls himself up, sees that he’s alone in the building, sees the front door opening and Dean coming inside, eyes fixed right on him, and collapses again, unconscious. 

\--

Sam wakes up in the Impala, neck cricked at an uncomfortable angle, mouth dry and lips cracked, close to bleeding. He sits up, rubs his eyes, and looks bleary-eyed at Dean, who’s sitting in the driver’s seat, hands clenched around the steering wheel, lips white and pressed together, staring out of the front window. 

Sam frowns, looks around, and says, “Dean? We’re not. We’re not going anywhere? What.” He stops, coughs, feels the action pull at his stomach, pull at something on his cheek, and he presses fingers to his face, brings them back and sees blood in the light of the streetlamps and flickering neon signs. “What’s going on? Did you get the laundry?” 

Dean snorts and Sam can hear his brother’s teeth grinding in the moment before Dean turns and looks at him with narrowed eyes. “Yes, Sam,” Dean says, with delicate anger, “I got the laundry. I also cleaned the blood off of your face and off the floor. I _also_ wiped down the sulfur from the doorway.”

“Sulfur?” Sam asks, before he blinks and it all comes back. “Oh.” 

“Yes, ‘oh,’” Dean says. “How long have you known that the demon was tracking us? And why the hell didn’t you tell me?”

Sam shakes his head, just once, until he remembers he’s just had a vision and moving like that makes his teeth ache at the gums. He reaches up, rubs one shoulder, and says, trying to pull back every word the demon said, “It was watching us in the bar, but I thought it left. I didn’t.” Sam stops, says, “I need to call Missouri. I. It said something, and I.” 

Dean lays a considering look on Sam, then pulls out his phone and punches speed-dial for Missouri before he swears, ends that call, and dials Grace, down in Dallas. It rings three times, then four, before voicemail kicks in, and Dean swears again. 

“Let me,” Sam says, and takes his own phone out of his pocket, dials Grace’s number from memory.

She answers before it finishes the first ring, sounding breathless. “Sam? Oh, thank fuck you called. You have to tell me what to do, okay?” 

Dean slides the phone out of Sam’s grip, and says, “Grace, it’s Dean. What the hell’s going on?” 

Sam closes his eyes, leans his head back on the seat, sinks into the ebb and flow of Dean breathing. 

Dean’s silent, listening for a while, before he says, sounding as if he’s repeating back words, “You’ve felt some demons test your wards, and Ava’s upstairs screaming about children, is that right? But you’re okay, right?” He pauses, and Sam can hear Grace’s voice chattering on the other end, panicked but not overly so, more like she’s worried, being cautious. “You’ve laid out extra wards, and Missouri’s helping you fuel them, but Ava won’t stop screaming.” 

“Gimme the phone,” Sam says, and Dean hesitates, so Sam says it again. “Give me the damn phone, Dean, and let me tell her what to do, okay?” 

The phone gets passed over, and Sam says, “Grace, it’s me. Listen to me, okay? It’s not her gift, I know that. They’re only nightmares, or maybe she can sense them somehow, but it is _not_ her gift. I hate to say this, but you’re under siege now, until we finish our hunt up here and can get down to you.” 

“But they’ll be gone by then, won’t they,” Grace guesses. “We’re only a distraction. Shit, Sam, I’m sorry. But we’ll be fine, I swear. Missouri’s here, she’s amazing.” 

“You and Missouri, you need to get to a _botánica_. You have paper?” When Grace says she’s ready, Sam rattles of a list of herbs and spices and adds, “Get some of the regular things as well. Missouri’ll know what to do with them all when she sees the list. It won’t take everything away, but it’ll help, until I can get there.” 

Grace hums, finishes writing things down, and finally says, “How’re you two doing, Sam? Dean sounded ready to tear something down, and you don’t sound so good. What’s going on up there?” 

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Sam says, which he knows isn’t really an answer. Judging by the Spanish Grace descends into, she knows that as well. “We’ll call you when we’re done, but if you need anything.” 

“I know, I know,” Grace says. “Don’t have to tell me twice. Take care, all right?” 

Sam smiles, tired, and says, “Always do,” before he hangs up. 

They sit in silence for a few minutes, until Dean says, without looking at him, “Something the demon told you?” 

Sam shifts, looks out of the side window, watching the empty streets, and finally says, “It knew I was going to have a vision. It wanted me to tell it what was going to happen, but I didn’t. It, it cut me, I think,” and he presses fingers to his cheek again, feeling the wound throb in rhythm with his shoulders, with his skull. “I don’t know,” Sam says. “It came to taunt us, I think, tell us we were taking too long.” 

Dean looks at him, reaches out and runs one finger along the clotted line of pain in Sam’s cheek. Sam flinches back, echoes of Dean’s touch travelling through every nerve in his body, and he’s still looking at Dean when Dean’s eyes turn guarded, shadowed. 

“What was this for?” Dean asks quietly, hand hovering in the air between them. 

Sam sighs, looks away, and in that split second, Dean’s got one hand holding Sam’s chin and tilting Sam’s head for better light, the other pressing lightly against the forming scab. Sam can’t swallow, throat too dry, and he feels his heart racing when he says, “Not helping it, I think. It asked about the vision, but I didn’t tell it what I saw. Or maybe it’s some kind of mark, like what it did to Ava. I don’t know. I couldn’t exactly ask, Dean.” 

“And what did you see?” Dean asks. His thumb, wide and warm and firm, rubs against Sam’s jawline, catching on Sam’s stubble. 

Dean’s done the same thing a thousand times before but this time it makes Sam shiver, makes Sam jerk out of his brother’s grasp, until Dean looks worried and lets go, lets his hands fall to his own knees. 

“Grayson Roberts,” Sam says. “He can call down lightning. His wife’s baking pies and his son’s out working on the fields, and Gray swears while he’s fixing a generator and blows the house to pieces.” 

“Fuck,” Dean says. Sam looks over, sees his brother’s throat working, as if Dean’s searching for words, for something that can express this situation—trying to help their father has never been so hard, not when they were looking for him after Stanford and Jess, not even after he made the deal for Dean’s life and left them to deal with the aftermath alone. 

Sam, with shaking hand, reaches out and lightly touches Dean’s shoulder, trying to ignore how warm Dean is, warm and alive and there, always there. “We’ll hurry,” Sam says. “We’ll be finished soon, and when we get him back.” He stops, says, “We’ll hurry.” 

\--

They both crawl into bed when they get back to the motel. Sam waits until he knows Dean’s asleep before getting up and going into the bathroom. He closes the door before he turns on the light, and looks at the cut on his cheek in the mirror. 

Sam pokes and prods it, and he knows, though he’s not sure how or why, that this won’t heal, not until the demon says it can. It’s like Ava’s mark, the one he can still feel throbbing on her collarbone, echoes laying down an ache on his, and Sam doesn’t know if this is something the demon does to his seers or all of his children, but he doesn’t like it, either way. 

As he’s watching, it seeps out one drop of blood, and Sam lets it run down his face as he shuts the light off and goes back into the bedroom. He glances at the bed but knows sleep’s not coming tonight, so, instead, Sam sits down and opens the laptop, tilting it away from Dean, as if Dean won’t wake up and see him in a couple of hours anyway. 

\--

Sam emails Grace first, asking for an update when she has time, and then emails a few other people, some hunters, some friends from college he’s nominally kept in touch with, telling most of them that he’s in the west with his brother, doing some hiking in the mountains, checking out the scenery and parks, making it sound like the latest stop in a years-long journey with no set destination and nothing specific to put them in Washington. 

Once he’s done with that, Sam runs a program he and Ash built the last time he and Dean stopped by the Roadhouse, one that combs through all sorts of networks and sites for information on weather patterns, mysterious happenings, missing persons reports, strange metallurgical findings, cattle deaths, everything that might point to a demonic infestation. It’s a ridiculously convoluted program, one that Sam, even at his most alert, can’t follow entirely, but it’s become habit now to leave it running while they’re looking for other things. 

That going in the background, Sam starts to look for any and all references to _raskovnik_ , because the books had some basic information but nothing that might help them locate a field. 

It’s while he’s trying to translate Russian-language sites that he remembers what he’d thought in the cave, seeing Dean kill the _alkonost_. One of the websites makes reference to the original myth of the _alkonost_ , about how the bird gets sent down from heaven to deliver a message from God, and Sam thinks, again, about the irony of it dying now, especially in a quest to find something for a demon. 

He pauses, though, and wonders, seeing Dean sleep like the dead—the _alkonost_ took their memories but the bird isn’t evil. Just the opposite in fact, so the people it left him and Dean, free of this life they’ve led, if those people, without knowing anything else, knew enough about themselves and each other to have sex, knew enough that it would work between them and that they wanted to, what does it say about blessings and destinies now? Could something evil come from something pure, Sam wonders, then swallows and looks back at the computer, because the answer to that is still yes; all he has to do is look in a mirror.

The program beeps and Sam clicks over, looks at what it’s found. There aren’t any signs that the demon might be going after a child, after a family, but the beginning signs of a psychic coming to power are starting to circle around Hyannis, Nebraska. Sam spares a thought for Mrs. Roberts, then closes the program and gets back to searching.


	5. Quatrième Partie

Dean wakes up an hour and a half later, throws a hissy fit when he sees Sam hunched over the laptop, squinting at the screen. Sam tries protesting, saying he’s fine, not tired yet, is narrowing down the possible locations of a _raskovnik_ field, and comes within an inch of just telling Dean that he won’t be able to sleep anyway so he might as well use the time productively. Still, he knows what sort of reaction that’s likely to get, so Sam lets Dean close the computer, push him to bed, tuck him in. 

Sam lies there, staring at the ceiling, picking out patterns from the stucco in what little light there is, and jumps when Dean finally says, minutes or hours later, “It’s not going to get better, is it.” 

“What’s not?” Sam asks, tentative, because he never likes it when Dean gets into one of his fatalistic slumps and he has no idea at all where Dean’s going with this. 

“Pick something,” Dean answers, and Sam sighs; Dean sounds dejected, yeah, but also pissed off. “All the damn psychics everywhere, we’re never gonna get to the end of them. And the demon, it can come and go so much easier than we can.” He pauses, then adds, “That thing on your face.” Sam breathes as silently as possible, and though Dean’s talking quietly, the next words he says are loud, seem to bounce off the wall. “It’s like Ava’s, isn’t it, and hers isn’t any better yet, either.” 

Sam sits up, lets the blankets fall off, pool around his stomach, and looks at Dean. Dean’s facing Sam’s direction, so he sits up once Sam does and turns, sits cross-legged, staring at Sam. Dean’s eyes flicker like green fire in the darkness. 

“We’ll find Dad,” Sam says. Dean opens his mouth, but Sam says, “Dean,” and Dean stops, sits and broods. “We’ll find Dad. We’re close. And when he’s back, we’ll fill him in on what’s going on, figure out how to stop the demon. Maybe, maybe if we do, it’ll help. And if not, if the demon’s gone, then we’ll have more time to track down the other psychics. Hell, we can get help for that. But we have to focus.” 

“How,” Dean demands. “Sam, you’re having visions all day and all night, you’re not sleeping, you’re not _well_. We’re hunting down insane things for Baba Yaga, and _that’s_ going real well, considering we.” 

Dean stops, abrupt, and Sam rubs his eyes. “Considering we might’ve had sex,” Sam says, as softly as he can. “We’ll just have to ignore it. We’re Winchesters, we’re good at ignoring things we don’t want to deal with.” It’s a joke that falls flat, and Sam can’t even bring himself to smile. Ignorance, that’s what’s needed to move on from this, no matter how much Sam might not want to, if he gave himself time and space to think about it. 

Sam looks at Dean, sees Dean sitting there, as if he’s trying to decide whether or not to say something. “What?” Sam asks, and it’s like Dean remembers Sam’s there and shakes his head. Sam recognises the signs of Dean burying something down deep, something he never wants to talk about or even acknowledge, so he asks again, “Dean, what?” 

Dean shakes his head again, so Sam says, apparently changing the subject, “Did you know that the _alkonost_ is usually considered a messenger of God’s divine will?” Dean snorts, and Sam drops the subject, because he can see Dean thinking about it, wonders into what context Dean is putting his comment. 

Sam lies back down, readjusts the blankets, and has counted to the thirty-seventh number in the Fibonacci sequence before Dean says, “It doesn’t change anything, Sam,” and turns his back to Sam. 

No, Sam thinks. It really doesn’t. 

\--

Sam wakes up first in the morning, rubbing sleep out of his eyes like sand. He gets out of bed, stands on feet far steadier than they have any right to be, and peeks around the edge of one curtain. Morning, after sunrise but not by much, and Sam looks at the clock, nods and goes into the bathroom. 

He pisses, washes his hands, studies the scratch on his cheek, and opens the door. Dean’s sitting up in his bed, yawning, stretching. Sam’s eyes linger on the strip of exposed skin between Dean’s shorts and his shirt, then looks up and sees Dean watching him. Instead of looking away, Sam holds Dean’s gaze, then takes in the circles under Dean’s eyes, the sharp prominence of Dean’s cheekbones, how pale Dean looks, and says, “You look like you could use more sleep.” 

“Fuck that,” Dean says. “If you’re going out for a run, I’m going, too. Remember what happened last time?” 

Sam stands there, hands crossed over his chest, while Dean glares at him, and finally says, “I’m leaving with or without you in three minutes, and if you even ask once for me to slow down.” 

Dean cuts him off, stands up and gives Sam the finger, muttering about Sam’s speed and energy level. “Think you’ve forgotten who taught you how to run,” Dean yells from the bathroom. “Who went to your stupid track meets and trained with your stupid cross-country team and drove you to all those stupid schools at oh-fuck-early-in-the-morning.”

Sam rolls his eyes, tying his shoes, and tries to ignore the throbbing in his cheek that sends a line through the back of his head, down across his collarbone, deeper into his chest, and calls back, “Only so you could get into Rachel McGuinness’ pants, Dean.” 

“And what lovely pants they were,” Dean says, standing in the doorway to the bathroom, rubbing a towel over his face, wistful smile gracing the curve of his lips. “Tight, but man, could she wear ‘em. Those _hips_.” 

“Asshole,” Sam mutters, “you misogynistic, ignorant, redneck asshole,” but when Dean merely elbows him on his way to his sneakers, Sam can’t stop the grin. Dean glances at him, quick-look out of the corner of one eye, as inconspicuous as he can make it, and starts whistling ‘Chariots of Fire.’

When they’re stretched and moving, Sam setting the pace and Dean to the side and one step behind, everything feels just like it should, only not, as if something is slightly off-kilter, just enough so that Sam can feel it. He wonders if it’s the pall of ‘did-we-didn’t-we’ sex, or the conversation they had in the night, or the way Sam couldn’t stop from looking at his brother, sleep-rumpled and worn-in, fifteen minutes ago. 

It’s probably all of them, some part of him thinks, while the rest shuts down, gives into the pounding, implacable rhythm of breath and footstep and heartbeat. All of them together, and nothing, because nothing’s really changed, like Dean said. Nothing’s changed and, yet, everything has, because Sam’s like a blind man that can finally see; he can’t parse what's in front of him, it’s too bright and loud and dizzying, but it’s the same thing he’s been feeling and hearing and tasting since as early as he can remember. 

Dean, start to finish, the one thing that his life is wrapped up in, has always been wrapped up in. From the moment John put him in Dean’s arms, he’s been Dean’s, and, just the same, Dean’s been his. If they did have sex during those hours neither of them can remember, it’s just another layer of everything they are. And if they didn’t, if they do in the future, it’ll be one more layer of belonging. 

Sam shakes his head, stops for breath, bracing himself on his knees, and Dean’s right there, hand on his shoulder, asking if he’s all right. Sam turns his head, looks over his shoulder, and sees Dean worrying his lower lip, teeth bright and shining in the sun. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, standing up, bouncing on his feet for a minute. He looks in the opposite direction from Dean, can still feel Dean there, radiating heat and concern, and then takes off, forcing his mind to fall into repetitions of numbers, one-two, one-two, counting out paces and listening to the pulse of blood in his veins. 

\--

Sam lets Dean shower first, and while Dean’s singing and probably using up all of the hot water, Sam sits at the desk, opens the laptop, and picks up from where he left off the night before. Dean comes out at some point, but Sam’s in the middle of reading census reports and checking out some over-the-top websites, and, despite being smacked on the head, he doesn’t stop, just waves his hand around his head, as if to say ‘ _no, stop, keep away._ ’ Sam distantly registers Dean saying something, but there’s a link at the bottom of the page he’s reading, one Sam clicks and then starts putting his tentative guesses into some kind of order. 

\--

Two hours later he looks up and blinks, imagining the taste of raspberries in the back of his throat. Dean’s nowhere to be found and, when Sam gets up and looks, neither is the Impala, but there’s a note with more information on it this time, so Sam sends a text, ‘ _Raspberries sound good for lunch tomorrow?_ ’ and gets in the shower. He takes a quick one, enough to get clean of the sweat from the morning run and the lingering effects of being touched by the demon, gets dressed, careful not to irritate the scab on his face, holding but fragile, and goes back into the room. 

Dean’s not back yet, but he called and left a voice-mail, said it wouldn’t be too long, so Sam checks his email again and replies to a couple older ones that he’d left until he had nothing else to do. One’s from Becky Warren, now Becky Martinez, married to an FBI agent and living in Miami, and while Sam relishes the contact with the one person who knew him at Stanford and knows the truth of what he and Dean do, this email’s skirting a little too closely to things he’d rather not think about, things like Ava, like the demon. He hasn’t told Becky about their hunts, the way they’ve been going after humans, killing as many as they help, but her questions are starting to get pointed, as if maybe whoever’s on their case now has gotten to her. 

_Have you been in Wyoming recently? Do you know anything about a killing down here last year? Were you anywhere near Utah when that woman died of dehydration?_

He writes her back, glossing over some things, highlighting others, telling her about the clan of _vila_ he and Dean recently met, obliquely mentioning something about Kansas, something else about a siren over by Coney Island, nothing to put them in the Pacific Northwest, nothing about the demon’s children. 

It’s a fine balance he’s walking and Sam knows it, can feel it deep down in his bones; they’ve been careful but they _are_ only human, and if they fuck this up now, so close to getting their father back, he’ll go crazy. Crazier, if such a thing is even possible.

\--

Dean gets back after Sam’s played six games of Spider Solitaire and won five, smelling of cigarette smoke and some spicy perfume. Sam doesn’t mention it and Dean doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes, but an awkward conversation and a shower for Dean later, they’re both sitting at the table, Sam detailing his research. 

“…opens any kind of lock that’s brought near,” Sam says. “People used to use hedgehogs to find it or some kinds of arcane rituals. Mostly hedgehogs.” 

“But you have a different way,” Dean guesses, leaning his chair back on two feet and using a pen cap to pick his teeth. 

Sam grimaces, watching his brother, but says, “Yeah. Because _raskovnik_ renders all locks useless, it has to be away from people. I checked census reports from the last fifty years and three counties have good potential. All of them had consistently low populations, not much traffic, off the beaten path, plenty of nature. Except then I was looking, and I found this one town, Goshen, and I think the _raskovnik_ has to be around there, it _fits_.” 

“Why Goshen?” Dean asks, chair thumping onto all four legs as he looks at the laptop Sam’s spinning around. 

Dean studies the map while Sam says, “Goshen’s a ghost town. Originally, they wanted to be the top end of a rail line that ended up in Bellingham. There aren’t many reports of why Goshen was passed over and people seem to exaggerate Bellingham’s access to water and cities further south, but Goshen was willing to funnel money into the project.” 

Dean hums, says, “So you think they were too close to a _raskovnik_ field,” like he’s asking for more proof. 

“Goshen’s two miles away from some completely uninhabited areas,” Sam replies. “Granted, there are some newer villages around there and most of the inhabitants are Scottish or Irish, but technology’s changed since then, and if just one person making the decision about the rail line had scouted the area and found _raskovnik_ within five miles of the town, there’s no way they would’ve brought a depot there.” Sam pauses for effect, then says, “One of the guys on the commission? His last name was Petrovich.”

Dean leans back again, throws the pen cap on the table, and Sam’s eyes watch it roll around. He sees something in the motion, the currents in the air that it leaves behind, something red and gold, and the smell of raspberries floods through his nostrils. 

“Whatcom County’s known for its raspberries,” Sam says, and by the way Dean’s looking at him, he knows he has to explain the apparent change of subject. “Hedgehogs eat berries. And I’ve been smelling them lately. Since before White Swan, off and on.”

“You’ve got a vibe about this, then,” Dean says, looking at Sam, all expression in his eyes carefully hidden. Sam studies them, looks away, because staring at Dean makes him feel lopsided and awkward, like there’s something inside of him clawing to get out. “About Goshen.” 

Sam shrugs, turns the laptop back to look at it, closes some of the windows, leaves up the map. He picks at the sticker, can see with his peripheral vision that Dean’s watching him, but Sam doesn’t look up, doesn’t look back at his brother. “I just think we should go. ‘Sides, it’s a ghost town. Maybe there’ll be ghosts.” 

Dean laughs, a sudden, sharp bark of sound, and kicks Sam’s ankle under the table. “We driving up there this afternoon?” he asks. “Ghost-hunting’s easiest at night.” 

“Yeah,” Sam says, ignoring the brightness of Dean’s smile. “Yeah, we should get moving.” 

“You should eat first,” Dean says. He sounds serious, contemplative, and that has Sam looking up at his brother, eyebrow raised. “You haven’t eaten anything since dinner last night, and considering you had a run-in with a demon, I can’t believe you’re not hungry.” 

Sam can already imagine it, food tasting like ash in his mouth, settling into his stomach like churning lava, burning and painful, but they pack up and head northwest, for Goshen, and Dean stops on the way out of Yakima, gets Sam a salad from a McDonald’s drive-through. 

Salad’s better than anything fried, and with Dean stealing the chicken off the top of the lettuce, ice-cold and crisp, it almost works. It doesn’t taste of anything, really, which is better than the alternative, Sam thinks, though what the alternative is, he doesn’t know. Sam thinks of Melanie, of Chrissie, of psychics eating meat that’s practically raw and of Mrs. Robert’s pie, cooling on the window. 

His head pulses, matching the beat of pain in his shoulders, and he knows that the pie was strawberry rhubarb, knows she mixed extra sugar in for her son’s sweet tooth, knows that Gray’s planning on having a quarter of the pie that night with a glass of milk and a little ice cream. Sam pauses, half-eaten piece of cucumber in his hand, halfway between the plastic dish and his mouth, then lets the fruit fall back onto the salad. 

Dean looks over, frowns, says, “Eat up,” and Sam spends the rest of the drive to Goshen picking at the lettuce, tearing it into small pieces that go brown around the edges and wilt. 

\--

Sam’s never seen a ghost town outside of the south-western states before, lots of dust and sand and the stereotypical tumbleweeds floating down the middle of streets that used to be packed, booming. They always left him with a strange sense of melancholia, as if man had tried to subdue nature and lost, leaving just the imprint of his time there in rotted out planks of wood, wisps of memory, things that creak and shutter when ghostly fingers press against them, through them. 

To see it here, in Goshen, near the mountains and surrounded by greenery, sun setting, is slightly surreal. Dean’s got the EMF-reader in his hands and the crackling noise sets Sam’s teeth on edge. He wants to scream, wants to glare at Dean’s creation and break into a million tiny pieces, wants to stalk into the town and call the ghosts to him, destroy them and take their power, wants to scratch at his shoulders until he reaches bone to pull out the ache, but he clamps down on the urge and instead picks up two shotguns, gives one to Dean and loads the other one himself. 

Before closing the Impala’s trunk, Sam reaches in and gets his gun, the Jericho, and loads it with iron rounds, tucks it in the back of his jeans. Dean raises an eyebrow in his direction, but Sam just shrugs. 

“All right, princess,” Dean murmurs, tweaking one of the dials on his EMF-reader. “Let’s see if anyone’s hanging around the town of Goshen.” 

\--

They sweep in the main street, shotguns cocked and ready, studying windows and doors first, Dean scanning the electromagnetic frequencies and Sam covering him, looking high while Dean looks low. They’re not quite back to back, but it’s close, and something about it feels _right_ to Sam, even as something else feels inherently wrong. 

“There’s something here,” he whispers. 

Dean nods, and two seconds later, the meter is screaming. Dean turns it off, shoves it into his pocket, takes out another gun, also loaded with salt, and says, “Split up? We could cover the territory faster.” 

Sam straightens up, just a little, hears his back crack. They’re in the centre of the town, now, everything visible between the two of them, and as much as Sam thinks Dean has a point, he also has a feeling, one he gets when there are complications, when things aren’t as simple as they appear to be. It grows until Sam thinks it nearly has enough power to coalesce into visibility, and he says, “Not yet. There’s,” before his head cracks with pain like lightning, quick and clear and deep into his mind. 

“Sam?” Dean asks, not turning around, and Sam guesses that means that, whatever it was, it happened too quickly for Dean to notice. 

“Yeah,” he says, hurrying, because the feeling of wrongness just went from bad to worse. He breathes out through his mouth, in through his nose, and coughs, choking on spirits. “Dean. Ghosts. There are. There are ten, maybe. If I call them here, can you get rid of them?” Dean freezes behind him, starts to say his name, but Sam ignores it, asks again. “If I call them, will you shoot them?” 

Dean pauses, says, “Sure. My aim’s good enough for that. But what about you, you have a whistle or something?” 

Sam appreciates the bravado, because he’s absolutely terrified, especially when he reaches out, somehow, and an apparition walks out of the bar, ghostly-white axe resting casually on one shoulder.

It’s not reaching out the way he does to the other psychics, nor the way he saw the florist shop in Lafayette when he looked at Rose. He’s not sure what the difference is, not sure if he could describe the way it feels, like the others were the way it felt to walk into a library, calm and orderly, everything in its place, knowing he belongs, he just has to find where in the stacks he fits, and this is the way it feels to suddenly appear in the middle of a rave, loud noises that startle and flashing lights prone to pushing out headaches, no way out in sight, no one there to help him. 

Sam doesn’t dwell on it longer than he has to, cataloguing the feeling for the next time, the next place, and once he hears the shotgun, once the ghost has scattered into bits of white lace and dandelion snow, he reaches out again, pulling a young-ish whore from the house across the street. 

“We’re going to talk about this,” Dean mutters, before shooting the apparition. 

Sam answers by calling out another ghost. 

\--

It doesn’t take long, not when the ghosts are coming to them, and the moon above them is full and bright enough to give them light when the last vestiges of sunlight disappear. Sam can’t feel them anymore, but he assumes he’ll be able to if they can gather enough energy to re-form themselves. He’s almost wishing they would, and quickly, because now Dean doesn’t have anything to distract him from turning around and searching Sam’s face, as if Sam might have contracted Ebola, somehow, and is bleeding from every orifice, close to death. 

“Sam,” Dean says, reaching up, tilting Sam’s chin so that he can peer into every crevice, over every plane of Sam’s face, checking to make sure Sam isn’t getting a nosebleed. 

“I’m fine,” Sam says, finding the energy to tear himself out of Dean’s grasp and turn away so that he doesn’t need to see the look on Dean’s face, so that he doesn’t need to face the way Dean’s touch makes his heart race and the way that he knows what that means now, when he didn’t before. “It’s. Something else, right? That’s all. But the same, I think. Somehow. I don’t know.” 

Dean steps around until he’s staring at Sam again, but this time he keeps his hands to himself. Sam can see the effort that takes. 

“I reached,” Sam says, glancing over Dean’s shoulder, in the direction of the Impala. His gun’s burning a hole in his back, and something’s off, again. It’s not the ghosts, though. “I reached, pushed, maybe, or pulled, and it just happened. I don’t know. I think I could.” 

“Could what? Don’t know what?” Dean asks, voice suddenly soft, as if he’s afraid of scaring Sam. 

Sam finds himself irrationally irritated, shying away from what he’d just been thinking, what he’d stopped saying before he could let it out and scare Dean. He thinks that, if he can pull ghosts to him, if he tried to do this and learnt the boundaries, learnt how it works, then he could pull demons, perhaps, or other supernatural creatures, anything he wanted. 

He doesn’t _want_ to think about that, though, so Sam snaps, “Anything, apparently. Can we not do this now, here? The ghosts could come back anytime.” 

Dean takes a step back and tilts his head, studying Sam. “Fine,” he says mildly, nodding. “That’s fine. Any idea what’s keeping them here?” With a sudden burst of glee, he adds, “We could just burn the whole town, in case. Bound to get everything that way.” 

A grin gets tugged out of Sam, at seeing Dean so excited, and Sam hates to burst his brother’s bubble, but he says, “People would notice, I think.” Dean deflates, mutters something about killjoys, and Sam frowns, because that sense, the one that told him something was wrong, it’s amping up again. 

This time, when the lightning hits his mind, he’s almost ready for it. Almost, but not quite, and it’s impossible to hide the split-second of pain from Dean when his older brother is actually watching, waiting for it. 

“What was that?” Dean asks, quietly again, but this time there’s anger floating in the words. 

Sam knows, abstractly, that he doesn’t have anything to worry about, not from Dean, not unless mother-henning and fussing worries him, but the look on Dean’s face does nothing to reassure him, not when he’s seen that look on Dean’s face a million times before and knows what follows, either burning or decapitation or iron rounds. It’s not a pretty look, not when Sam can tell that Dean’s furious, that he’s digging deep to hide his rage as much as possible and failing because there’s too much to bury.

It hits him, as these things have been doing lately, that Dean’s anger, his absolute fury, at times, is just as beautiful as when Dean smiles or laughs, the real smiles and the deep belly laughter, not the façade he presents when they got out hustling for money or warm bodies to bury themselves in. 

“I’m sorry,” Sam breathes. Dean looks taken aback, though whether it’s by the apology or the tone in which the words slipped out, Sam’s not sure. “I’m sorry, Dean. I love you.” 

He watches, fascinated, as emotions rip through Dean’s eyes, across Dean’s face, one after the other, almost too fast to track, until Dean’s wearing a guarded look and shifting uncomfortably on his feet, almost every vestige of anger gone. 

“Sammy,” Dean begins, slowly, but then stops, seems to steel himself to speak, and says, “What was that? Your head thing,” he adds, as if Sam needs clarification. 

Sam’s half-tempted to ignore the change in subject, to push, because of what he saw flitting through Dean’s eyes not one minute ago, but he doesn’t, just sighs, says, “I’m not sure. It happened before, before I called the ghosts. That one hurt more, though.” 

“Gift or,” Dean says, trailing off, and the muscles in his jaw clench when Sam does nothing more than shrug. 

It happens again, a quick and intense burst of electricity through Sam’s mind, but it feels precise this time, almost surgical, whittling for something, and Sam’s whirling around, gun out from his jeans and in his hand, eyes scanning everything within sight, shotgun on the ground, forgotten. 

“The ghosts is me,” Sam says flatly, “but the pain, that’s not. Something’s here and it’s trying to get into my head.” 

\--

Dean pulls Sam away from the town just as something else is trying to keep him anchored there. Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel malevolent; instead, it’s as if whatever’s there, watching, is curious about Sam, wants to know more. He gets the feeling that if whatever it is wanted to hurt him, it could do so quite easily, just by pushing a little harder at his mind, but he doesn’t share this theory with Dean, not when Dean’s driving white-knuckled, music off, too fast. 

They drive to Bellingham, just a ten mile jaunt to a clean motel on the outskirts of the city, and get a room. Dean doesn’t let Sam touch the salt or the wards, insists on doing them all himself, and makes Sam carry in their gear, sit down, find them a place to call and get pizzas delivered from the phone book in the desk drawer. Sam opens the laptop while Dean’s finishing a particularly complicated Celtic knot on the door, but Dean shuts the computer closed as he passes, just after Sam’s opened up the Wikipedia page on Goshen, as well as a few other sites he’d bookmarked just that morning. It feels like it’s been longer. 

“What the hell, Dean?” he asks, incredulous, as Dean’s calling the pizza place. “We need to figure out what could be there so we can stop it.”

Dean chats on the phone, orders a sausage with green peppers and a ham and pineapple, tells the person on the other end where to deliver them, without taking his eyes off of Sam the entire time. Once he’s off the phone, Dean says, “There’s time, Sam. You need to rest, and we aren’t going back there until we have some idea of whatever else is there, trying to.” 

He stops, motions at Sam’s head, and Sam’s tired, frustrated, confused in his own skin and scared in a way that he hasn’t been since he ran away to California, so he can’t help sniping back, “I’m not the only one that needs to _rest_ , Dean. You look like shit. Your fuck this morning a little too strenuous to handle? You getting old?” 

Dean stares at him, face pale and drained of colour, until it’s Sam that turns away, mumbles an apology he doesn’t mean. 

They sit in silence until the pizza comes, laptop closed, table a waste of empty battleground between them.

\--

The rest of the night passes quietly, uncomfortably. Sam eventually mutters something about going for a run, and Dean asks if Sam has his cell phone, in case Dean needs to come pick him up. Sam nods, once, and ties the laces on his sneakers a little too tightly, stretches fast and hard, runs faster, harder, less a form of meditation than a method to abuse a body that doesn’t feel like his own. 

Long strides eat up the sidewalks until he’s out of the city proper, running on county roads, kicking up gravel in the air behind him. He’s angry and he doesn’t know why; his heart aches and he doesn’t know why; he’s tired and he knows that it won’t ever end, even when they _do_ get their father back. 

He thinks about the touch in Goshen, because now, separated from it by distance and time, he recognises it for what it was, a touch, curious, and from something so different from humanity that it hurt. Sam relaxes, just enough to calm his pace, settle down into rhythms and beats, and thinks. 

\--

He bursts back into the motel room thirty minutes later, cheeks flushed, the arch under his eyebrows stained red, sweat dripping through his clothes, and bends over, panting, looks at Dean and says, “If the depot had come here, there would have been iron. Lots of iron, all over the place. And they were logging, killing the trees. Right?” 

Dean’s looking at him with wide eyes from his spot on the bed closest to the door, empty pizza box to one side, cardboard holding pots of oil, a few dirty rags, pieces of Sam’s Beretta. “And when you loaded up on weapons,” Dean says, slowly, hesitantly, as if he doesn’t want to interrupt Sam’s thought-processes or, maybe, as if he wants to chide Sam for pushing himself too far but knows Sam has to get this out, “you grabbed iron rounds. You’re saying you think this was _fae_? Totally not Russian, dude.” 

Sam stands up straight, leans one arm against the doorway, lets his body weight fall on his arm, barely staying propped up. “Doesn’t matter, Russian or not,” he says, breathing patterns starting to regulate again, heartbeat slowing down. “The _raskovnik_ ’s Russian, and it’s around here somewhere. Doesn’t mean the people—the things—guarding it have to be Russian. ‘Sides, why can’t there be more than one cultural basis here? Melting pot, remember?”

“I’ve never heard of fae being able to, to do whatever that one did to you,” Dean says, as if he’s trying to find loopholes in Sam’s conclusion. 

Sam can’t blame him; dealing with the fae is never fun, but he knows, he _knows_ , that the touch he felt was one of the fae. “We’ve never heard of a person like me, either,” he says. “Even with the other psychics, no one else can do what I can do, not even Ava. The fae, I think it was just curious. It wanted to know more. Maybe it reached out to you first and didn’t get anything, we don’t know. Maybe if I was,” he pauses, slightly, stumbles over the next word, “normal, I wouldn’t have felt anything.”

Dean’s jaw clenches, as if he hates that, but he doesn’t argue, doesn’t disagree. Sam knows there wouldn’t be any reason to, at this point. 

“So,” Dean says, instead. “The fae. Y’know what that means?” Sam shrugs, and Dean answers his own question, says, “Means you stay here while I finish clearing out Goshen and we go back for the _raskovnik_ later. And hopefully far away.” 

Sam moves away from the door, throws himself into one of the chairs, tips his head back and stares at the ceiling for a few seconds before looking at his brother. “We walked into its territory, Dean,” he says. “Chances are, the _rasknovnik_ ’s in its territory as well. We confront it.” 

“Fuck that,” Dean says, sitting up, pinning intense eyes on Sam. “Fuck. That. There’s no way in _hell_ I’m letting you get anywhere near a fae right now, no fucking way.” Dean shakes his head, as if in emphasis, then stands up, narrowly avoiding kicking the pizza box to the floor. He starts pacing, back and forth, looking like a caged tiger in the small room, talking to himself. “Can’t keep you safe from the damned demons, end up dragging you across the fucking country and getting you sick with visions, losing your memory, no way I’m letting a fae near you, no, not gonna happen.”

Sam listens with half an ear as Dean goes on, but something in his mind has stopped, is trying to figure out what Dean’s said that’s wrong, somehow. “Wait,” he says, and Dean pauses, mid-step, to turn and look at him. “Wait.” It comes slowly, all too slowly, but then it hits, and Sam looks up with wide eyes, asks, “Losing my memory?” 

If he hadn’t been looking for it, Sam would’ve missed the catch in Dean’s breath, and if he hadn’t spent the past year hunting with Dean, living in Dean’s back pocket, telling Dean everything about every manifestation of his gift, he wouldn’t notice the flicker in Dean’s eyes, the way his pupils are dilating, the way Dean’s finger just reached out, so minutely, and brushed against his jeans. 

He stands up, slowly, and asks again, “Losing _my_ memory, Dean? What’s going on? What haven’t you told me?” 

Dean squares his shoulders, stands there, feet apart, arms locked, and doesn’t say a word. At this point, having noticed what he has already, Sam would be able to tell a lie from the truth, and Dean knows it. Sam thinks that’s the only reason Dean hasn’t tried feeding him a line already. 

“Drop it, Sam,” Dean says, clear command in that voice he had to have learned from their father, but Sam’s never listened well, never liked being ordered around. “Now.” 

Sam crosses his arms on his chest, says, “No. Tell me what you know, Dean.” 

Stalemate, the two of them standing there, neither of them about to back down, but then Dean tilts his head just enough so that the lamplight bounces off of the arc of Dean’s jawline. Sam sees it, gets distracted with the way that the light, pale and weak, adds shadows and colours to Dean’s stubble, already growing in thick over skin far too pale for it being late summer, and Dean asks, “Where’s home, Sam?” in a quiet voice that Sam’s never heard come out of his brother’s lips before. 

Sam flinches, doesn’t step back but it’s close, and something in the back of Dean’s eyes shutters. Sam’s mouth goes dry, and Dean lets out a dry bark of laughter. 

“Palo Alto, right?” Dean asks, and the tone, anger and sorrow and _need_ , all sewn together, makes Sam’s breath catch. “With all of your friends, with Jess, living the normal, cookie-cutter life, pre-law, mind in the clouds. Right?” 

It’s almost a dare, and Sam takes a deep breath before he says, “Rose said not to ask unless you wanted to,” as if he’s trying to remind his brother of what Rose really said, not to ask until he could stand hearing the answer, whatever it might be. He knows that Dean understands what Sam’s saying: this isn’t a light question that will distract him and if he answers this, then Dean will _have_ to answer Sam’s question, that Dean might not believe or like the answer, but that Sam won’t lie and that Dean will have to accept it, no other choice. 

“Yeah, well, now I want to,” Dean snaps back, spots of colour high in his cheeks. “Think I don’t know you liked everything else better than what Dad and I tried to give you? Think I don’t get that nothing was ever good enough? I’m not _stupid_ , Sam, no matter how much you might disagree.” 

“The front seat of the Impala,” Sam says, much more calmly than he would’ve thought possible of himself. Dean, mouth open and ready to spit more, stops, as if he can’t believe what he’s just heard. Dean falters, and Sam adds, “Passenger side, obviously.”

Dean looks so obviously confused, so small and lost, that Sam wants to kill himself for putting that expression on Dean’s face, but he doesn’t take it back, doesn’t look away to give Dean a minute to pull himself together. He just stands there, watching, letting Dean stare at him, study him, not hiding everything, leaving it out there. 

“That’s not,” Dean starts to say, tone matching the expression he’s still wearing. “Sam, that’s.” 

“It sounds stupid, right?” Sam says, half-laughing, reaching up to scratch his head as if he’s ashamed of his answer. “I mean, I had pretty much everything. Even if it was just for a couple years. But, y’know, there was always something missing. Something that didn’t feel right about being there, with Jess, riding my bike to class every day, going downtown on the train for my internships. But when you came to get me, when I got into the Impala and we went down to Jericho, it just. It just fit. Like Rose said, like it was where I was supposed to be, where I _want_ to be. I can’t.” Sam stops, finally looks away, as if he can’t meet Dean’s eyes as he says, “I can’t imagine being anywhere else, now.”

Dean’s still staring, and he finally sits down on the edge of the bed, heavily, a pre-emptive action before his knees give out, Sam thinks. Sam stands there, silent, waiting for Dean to say anything, but Dean doesn’t. It’s three minutes before Sam finally shifts on his feet, and that draws Dean’s attention back to him, away from the thoughts clearly running through Dean’s mind. 

“You’re joking,” Dean says flatly. “You have to be. If it’s not Palo Alto, where? Lawrence? That one place we stayed during your senior year?” 

Sam shakes his head, smiles lightly, sits down again in the same chair. “There’s only one place that’s always been home, Dean. Though at least I’ve graduated from the backseat to the front.” 

Dean shakes his head, seems to lose himself again. If Sam’s honest with himself, and he’s going to start trying, anyway, he admits that he hadn’t quite been expecting this reaction. 

\--

It takes a while before Dean finally looks at Sam and _sees_ him. He wrinkles his nose, says, “You haven’t gotten your memory back yet.” Sam tilts his head, frowns because he doesn’t understand, and Dean expands, says, “The first time we got hit with the _alkonost_ , we lost our memories, but we got them back within, what, two minutes? Three? You passed out before I did when we went back the second time, so I guess the damn bird hit you harder than it hit me. Maybe something to do with your gifts.” 

“You’ve gotten your memory back,” Sam says, point-blank. “You know what happened and you never told me.” His mind’s racing, trying to see if he remembers a moment when that might have happened, when Dean’s actions changed, because Sam knows without a shadow of a doubt that _something_ sexual happened, but he can’t think of one, can’t place it. Either his brother’s a good actor, or. 

Dean nods, just once, and says, simply, “I remember.” 

Sam whispers, “What happened?” and isn’t expecting Dean to reach up, pinch the bridge of his nose, and start to say his name in that tone Sam knows means his older brother doesn’t want to say anything. “Dean, come on. Fair exchange, right? Tell me what happened.” 

“Nothing happened,” Dean says. At Sam’s snort of disbelief, Dean shrugs, says, “We ate pizza, tried to figure out what the hell we were doing with all the guns and fake IDs, figured out each others’ names, got drunk, and slept a lot. Nothing happened.” 

“I saw the stains on the sheet,” Sam argues. “Dude, the room _reeked_ of jizz.” 

Sam’s not sure why he needs to know, but he does and it’s important. It isn’t as if he’s going to be disgusted, not when all he’s been able to focus on since it happened is Dean, not when Dean’s been everything to him already, not when he’s pretty much just come out and admitted that _Dean_ is where Sam feels at home. Of course, as he sits there, he realises that Dean doesn’t know all of that, just like Dean doesn’t know what Sam thought about on their run that morning, what Sam’s been thinking for a while, what Sam hadn’t himself known until this all happened. 

Except, the way that Dean’s looking at him, watching him, maybe Sam’s been the stupid one all along and Dean _has_ known. Sam’s loved Dean for years, and even though Sam’s only putting a name to it now, it doesn’t mean that Dean hasn’t long before this. Maybe Dean’s afraid of how Sam will react when Sam learns the truth, because—as far as Dean knows—Sam hasn’t realised he loves Dean yet. Maybe Dean thinks that Sam hasn’t realised he’s _in love with his older brother,_ and, oh, God, that’s incest, isn’t it? 

Sam thinks about that for a minute, then decides he doesn’t care. Some part of him has obviously considered this very carefully already, because Sam remembers that time when he was sixteen and walked in on Dean fucking his girl of the week against the kitchen counter, how he’d been skittish around Dean for weeks afterward, not because he’d seen his brother having sex but because he was jealous. 

He’d thought at the time that he was jealous of Dean, or upset about having seen it, but he gets now that he’s been lying to himself pretty damn convincingly; now that he thinks about it, he’d been jerking off to that image for weeks, and it wasn’t the girl he’d been thinking of in showers and dark bedrooms, hadn’t been the girl emblazoned on the inside of his eyelids. He wonders if that explains all the psychology classes, all the papers on Westermarck’s theory and Freud’s Oedipal ideas and Thebes’ Sacred Band, all of the disappointment he felt when he realised that no one had ever done research on the kind of life he and Dean had grown up in, that there were no rules and no one to ask.

Dean’s still sitting there, watching him, wary, and Sam says, “There were two stains. We jerked each other off? Or,” and trails off, unable to put anything else into words, not when everything’s a jumble in his head. 

“Just once,” Dean says, cautious. “And then we fell asleep, and the next morning we woke up as us.” Dean looks like a man facing a jury without any idea how the jury’s decided, but as if his life hangs in the balance. Sam doesn’t say anything, can’t say anything. Dean finally speaks up, a hesitant, “Look, we’ll just forget about it, pretend it never happened. What’d you say, we’re Winchesters, right? Good at denial. So we’ll put it behind us and move on.” 

“What if I don’t want to?” Sam says, before he can stop himself. He pauses, doesn’t look away from Dean as he weighs his words, every permutation of the intent behind them, all of the possible consequences that might follow them. “What if. Dean, I’ve always. I just didn’t.” 

_What if I don’t want to put it behind us?_ Sam’s asking, in between and around the words actually coming out of his mouth. _I’ve always wanted this, for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved you. I just didn’t know, didn’t realise. I never knew. I want._

Dean rubs a hand over his face, leans forward and puts his elbows on his knees, buries his face in his palms. He sighs, and it sounds so tired, so worn, that Sam can’t help but lean forward as well, reach out, let his fingertips rest on Dean’s knee before falling off, a silent query. 

“I thought maybe you’d gotten over it,” Dean mumbles from between his fingers, but Sam hears every word. “I thought. And then you left, and Jess, I thought. After Jericho, and the fire.”

Sam’s heard every word Dean’s said, and he’s heard all of the ones Dean _didn’t_ say, their own personal language. _I thought you’d gotten over me. I thought Jess took you away from me. I thought you were happy. I thought you’d be gone forever. You missed her so much. You_ grieved _for her and I know you didn’t do that when you left me. You left me._

“I’m here,” Sam says. A car drives past outside, music blaring, and Sam jumps at the sudden noise, the sudden reminder that they aren’t alone in the world, the sudden intrusion into this conversation. “Dean, I’m here, and I’m never leaving. Home, remember? Why didn’t you.” 

Dean snorts, looks up at Sam, and Sam can see the lines around his older brother’s eyes, the wariness and desperate hope Dean’s trying so hard to hide. “Hello, _brothers_ ,” Dean says, rolling his eyes, as if to say that Sam can’t _honestly_ be that stupid. “In no country, in no religion, is that legal. Besides, you were young, and you. You weren’t making any big deal about staying around. You wanted to leave, and I knew you, okay? I knew you would. You deserved the chance.” 

Sam breathes in deep, pulls up every spare grain of courage he possesses, and says, quietly, “What about now?” Dean looks away, and Sam remembers being in Goshen, head aching, watching Dean turn into the sleek predator Sam knows is always buried in his brother and waiting to come out, vicious and cruel and clinging on to life with teeth and claws. 

“I love you,” Sam says, and sees the shiver start at Dean’s temple and work its way down Dean’s body, through every single muscle. Sam laughs, just once, and adds, “I have for years. I just never realised. Fuck. And now I’m old enough to make my own choices, okay? But damn, here I thought I was supposed to be the smart one.” 

Dean laughs at that, and some of the tension dissipates from the air, some but not all and not nearly enough. As much as Sam wants to continue this discussion, as much as he fights it, he yawns a second later, and Dean bosses him around, calls him a girl, fights and orders and cajoles, has Sam in bed ten minutes later, snuggling under the covers. 

“We’re not done talking about this,” Sam says, sleep riding his voice. He can hear Dean roll his eyes from across the room, and something slots home when he realises how much he likes that, knowing Dean as well as that.

\--

Things are awkward in the morning—Sam hadn’t expected anything else. After all, he’s just told Dean he loves him and Dean’s never been one for chick-flick moments. Sam has the propensity to enjoy them, though, so Dean will just have to deal with it. Of course, Sam’s not stupid enough to say this to Dean’s face, but from the way Dean’s muttering and rolling his eyes at every opportunity, asking Sam if he left his balls in the shower, calling him ‘princess’ or ‘Samantha’ every five seconds, Sam guesses that Dean knows. 

Still, for all that things are awkward, they seem to be more in tune with each other than ever before, hardly needing to look at one another as they decide to go out and grab breakfast, shower, get dressed. Dean has fun with it, too, bumping Sam’s elbows more than strictly necessary, flicking Sam’s ear, shoulder, and arm more than normal, and when they get to a diner a few blocks over, Dean kicks Sam under the table when Sam lifts heavily sweetened coffee to his lips and snickers when he sees coffee dripping off of the end of Sam’s nose. Sam tries to be upset, but he can’t be, not when an invisible burden that Dean’s been carrying around for years seems to have lifted overnight. 

Dean gets eggs and bacon, sausages and toast, a thick slice of ham and pancakes, and shovels it all in his mouth while Sam eats French toast and pretends to be disgusted when Dean grins crookedly and says, mouth full of food, “Y’like seafood, little bro?” 

“I don’t know how you pick up women with the success rate you have, acting like that,” Sam says, and it’s not mean, not harsh, just a matter-of-fact of statement, honestly curious. 

“I don’t act like this when I’m trying to get laid, Sam,” Dean says, slightly mocking, as he cuts into his ham and swirls it in a puddle of egg yolk before eating it. 

Sam wrinkles his nose, taking the last bite of food his stomach will allow him without protesting, and pushes the rest of the French toast, easily half the plate, over to Dean. He ignores the worried look Dean gives him, then the considering look Dean gives the food, and shudders when Dean gets a bite of everything on his plate onto the fork at the same time, and gives it a whirl. Maple syrup, charred bacon, greasy sausage, whipped cream, strawberries, slightly runny egg whites; Sam watches as Dean opens his mouth, puts the food in, chews with a thoughtful look, swallows. 

“How can you _eat_ that?” Sam asks. 

Dean grins, wide and carefree; Sam feels it in his stomach, lower, setting his blood to a low burn. “How can you _not_?” 

He tries to remember that he is the only one that gets to see Dean like this, that he is the only one Dean comes home to every single night, but when Dean cocks one eyebrow, smiles again, and Sam sees a speckle of raspberry jam clinging to one of Dean’s teeth, he can’t stop himself. “That is _so_ gross.” 

Dean laughs, and Sam watches as three of the waitresses turn to watch. Dean doesn’t look at any of them. 

\--

They go back to the room and this time, when Sam opens the laptop, Dean lets him. Sam’s got an ache in the back of his head, another vision, he thinks, probably of Grayson, but he pushes down the pain and focuses on the research. 

Neither of them have actually gone after one of the fae before, but they know, distantly, of others who have. Dean re-checks their father’s journal even though they’ve both read it enough to know that John has never met up with any member of the Seelie or Unseelie courts and doesn’t write about anyone else doing that, either. Sam pulls up a few websites, starts looking around, but the fae have always been sneaky and Sam has no idea, despite anything he’s told Dean to the contrary, why there would be fae here, now, in Goshen, guarding _raskovnik_. 

He emails Ash, begging for help, and gets as far as the online version of the third chapter in the purported _Handbook to Faerie_ , ‘Of Bindings and Pledgings,’ before the vision won’t wait any longer. Sam leans away from the laptop, gritting his teeth and clutching his temples, lets the vision roll over him and take him under, drag him through the sights and sounds and smells, until it moves, carried away by whatever psychic wind it is that Sam taps into. 

Dean, of course, is right there, hands on Sam’s shoulders, eyes determined but panicked as well, just like every time Sam comes out of a vision. Sam breathes in, a deep, shuddering lungful of air, and can feel blood drip down his cheek. 

“Shit,” he mutters, reaching up and touching his cheek, looking at his fingers, coated in blood. It doesn’t hurt, almost feels natural, like of course he should bleed when he has visions, and that, more than what he saw, scares him. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Dean snorts, and Sam startles, looks at his brother. “Dean?”

“It’s just, y’know, the swearing,” Dean says, waving it off before his forehead creases and he asks, “You gonna make it? That one looked bad.” 

Sam shrugs, winces and feels the muscles in his face pull. “Closer to zero hour,” he says, and Dean nods in understanding. The visions of new psychics always hurt more the closer they come to awakening; Gray’s got about three hours, if Sam’s interpreting his vision right, until the first and last time he calls lightning.

Sam blinks, opens his eyes and focuses on Dean, who’s still kneeling there, face too close to Sam’s. Before the _alkonost_ , Sam would have felt uncomfortable with this, would have pushed Dean away and waited for Dean to make some joke about it. Now, with Dean just _there_ , not moving, Sam reacts before he can stop himself, leans forward and presses his lips against his older brother’s, holds the position for a handful of seconds, his eyes open. 

Dean stares back at him, then pulls back the slightest bit, enough so that when he talks, Sam can almost feel the brush of Dean’s lips, dry, chapped, against his own, feel the breath of Dean’s words. 

“Are you sure this is what you want, Sammy?” Dean asks in a whisper. 

Sam can’t tell what emotion is underlying the question, and that surprises him. “Yes,” he says, simple and direct. “If it’s what you want, too.” 

Dean snorts again, moves suddenly and his lips are on Sam’s, one hand moving to the back of Sam’s neck, holding lightly, fingertips tangling in Sam’s hair. Sam’s eyes close and he tilts his head enough so that their noses aren’t smashed together. Dean moves as well, and Sam’s gasping a second later, opening his eyes, as Dean drags his fingernails down the nape of Sam’s neck, sensitive skin, rough and not holding anything back. Dean’s tongue is in his mouth, then, and Sam closes his eyes again, because this, it’s all too much, too much and too fast and if he has to look at Dean as well, he’ll explode. 

There’s a whimpering noise, half moan, that Sam’s surprised to feel coming from him, and Dean draws back, turning down the intensity with short, soft licks of his tongue against Sam’s lower lip, nipping just once then soothing the sting, bumping his forehead on Sam’s. 

“This is,” Dean says, and Sam can’t help widening his eyes at the way Dean sounds, rough and ragged and gentle, scared and confident and desperate, all at once. “This is going to be.” 

He stops, but Sam knows what he means. “Yeah,” he says. “It is.”


	6. Cinquième Partie

Sam goes to the bathroom and cleans his face, comes back out and sits back down at the desk, picks up the research where he left off, surfing back and forth between different sites with the ease of a scholar, taking one- and two-word notes that won’t mean much to anyone else, looking at fae practices, fae histories, fae courts and nobilities and hierarchies. 

He’s not sure what Dean’s doing to keep himself entertained, and as he keeps going, one minute turning into one hour, he feels Dean’s presence, there in the room, no need to reach out and search for him. At one point, Dean walks behind him, runs a hand over the breadth of Sam’s shoulders, and Sam relaxes, lets go of tension he hadn’t realised he was collecting. It doesn’t distract him, because it feels right, and because it’s Dean. 

\--

“I wish we had more to go on,” Sam finally says, leaning back in his chair and cracking his knuckles three hours later. “I still don’t know what type of fae it was, but I’m pretty sure it _was_ fae. Ninety-nine point bar nine percent sure.” He tilts his head back, stares at the ceiling, then lets his neck arch even further, until he’s looking behind him, seeing Dean sitting on one of the beds, upside-down. 

“Anyone we can call?” Dean asks, moving to stand up, come over to the desk, sit down in the other chair, kick his feet up and put them on Sam’s lap. 

Without thinking, Sam straightens up and starts rubbing Dean’s feet, as if this isn’t the first time they’ve done this. When he realises what he’s doing, he stops, looks down, wonders how it can feel so right, so perfect, so quickly, when it took him weeks to settle into something with Jess, but he mentally shrugs, shaking off the question Dean’s posing with his raised eyebrow. 

“Bobby’s more of a demon guy and Joshua deals with magically-inclined humans,” Sam says. “Most of the other hunters are creature-oriented. I’m not sure if any of them have ever run up against one of the fae. There were rumours of that couple, back in the early nineties, but no one knows their names or where they might be now. When it comes to the fae, we all just try to avoid them.” 

Dean grimaces, says, “Not like we have a choice this time around. You sure I can’t just go and get the _raskovnik_ myself?” 

“What, and be kidnapped and taken to Faerie?” Sam snaps back, without any real heat. “No, Dean. We’ll both go. Maybe if we can find the _raskovnik_ and harvest it quick enough, we can get out of here without even seeing the fae.” Sam doesn’t even have to look at his brother to see the expression on Dean’s face, and he sighs, says, “Yeah, I know. The chances of that happening aren’t exactly stellar.” 

Dean hums, peers through the papers Sam’s accumulated on the table, scratched out and scribbled notes, gives up with a snort when he must find them incomprehensible. “Think we can at least find the _raskovnik_ before the fae finds us?” 

Sam breathes out, feels the scab, tender and fresh, on his cheek pull at the skin around it, just as much as his shoulders pulse with every heartbeat, ache still present. He thinks of Chrissie, how fast she could move with her gifts unlocked, how dangerous she was, not just to humans, but to pretty much every supernatural creature as well, and says, “Probably.” 

\--

They get dressed in cleaner clothes, load their pockets with iron and steel, and Sam uses a black pen to draw a sigil on Dean’s sternum, uses the bathroom mirror to draw the same symbol on his own skin. Looking from the mark, no wider than two fingers, to the throbbing in his shoulders, where he feels but doesn’t see the entryway from bullets, to the line of his collarbone and the scratch on his cheek, he wonders abstractly how much more he can handle before his mind breaks apart under the strain. For all that he’s tainted, claimed, he’s still human, but only just, and every time another function of his gift unlocks itself, he questions how much he can take before he’s intrinsically changed. 

“You still look like a brain-dead puppy,” Dean says, sticking his head around the doorway. “Come on, I’m ready to go pick some flowers.” 

“It’s a type of grass,” Sam counters back, quick and easy, light in contrast to the weight of his speculation a moment before. “Like I told you, idiot.” 

Dean smiles, rolls his eyes. “Whatever, Samantha. Let’s go pick some _grass_.” He disappears out of sight, and Sam looks once more at the mirror before he sighs, shuts the light off, follows his brother. 

\--

Dean drives and pulls over on the side of Kelly Road when Sam tells him to, asking if Sam’s got a vibe about this or if he’s just making Dean drive all over the state like some kind of chauffeur, and please, no hiking when they haven’t even had lunch. 

“You _can’t_ be hungry,” Sam says, staring at his brother. 

Dean shrugs, retorts, “Not my fault you didn’t clean your plate. Now, vibe or guess?” 

Sam looks out into the trees, looks around for any signs of civilisation and doesn’t find them, and finally says, “Guess.” 

“Good,” Dean says, almost immediately. “Weird shit happens when you get vibe-y. Guesses are safer.” 

They set off through the trees, Dean with a gun in one hand and a machete in the other, Sam with a gun and a basket with a lock in the bottom, as if they’re expecting the big bad wolf or a pack of zombies. Instead, they stumble across a large area of wild raspberries, and Dean reaches down, picks a handful, shoves them in his mouth. Sam watches, eyes drawn to the smear of juice on Dean’s lips, running down Dean’s chin. 

“Oh, hey,” Dean says, reaching down, and when he straightens up, he’s holding a marigold, picked fresh. Sam looks down, sees a slew of them tangled in with the raspberry plants, and thinks that this _has_ to be some kind of cosmic joke. “Hungry?” Dean asks, offering the flower to Sam. 

“Yes,” Sam says, but he ignores the flower and goes for the fingers holding it, stained red with juice. Dean makes some kind of noise because he clearly hadn’t been expecting that, though he doesn’t pull back, just keeps his eyes pinned on Sam as Sam sucks each of Dean’s fingers, one by one, until they’re clean. 

Sam swallows, then, because he hadn’t thought before he’d done that, and now he’s not sure what Dean’s thinking, but Dean grins, rakish and wicked, and reaches down, picks another handful of raspberries, pushes them all into his mouth, and holds out his hand, jokingly imperious. “Clean me,” he says, snobbish air that’s pretty damned fake coming from Dean, especially with a mouth full of fruit.

Sam doesn’t call Dean on the tone, just raises an eyebrow and says, “We’re trying to get the _raskovnik_ and get out, remember?” trying not to laugh when Dean pouts and wipes his hand on his jeans. 

\--

They come out of a section of trees into a field, and it isn’t until Sam looks down and sees the lock in the bottom of the basket fallen into pieces that he realises they’ve found the _raskovnik_. “Dean,” he says, calling out lightly, and when Dean turns, Sam shows him the lock. 

Dean looks around, seemingly unimpressed, but while Sam’s pulling up grass and filling the basket, he asks, “Think we could keep some of this around instead of lock-picks?”

“It would die too soon to be much use after a couple days,” Sam says. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. Guess you’re just stuck with me.” 

“Worse things in life,” Dean says, lightly, but Sam knows the weight those words have behind, underneath them. 

He looks up, grins, finishes filling the basket. “Let’s get out of here.” 

\--

They’re in the middle of the woods, not half a mile from the Impala, when Sam stops. He looks around them, doesn’t see more than trees, but now he’s getting vibes, and, a moment later, the lightning touch of fae fingers against his mind. Instead of the way it felt yesterday, a microsecond long burst of intense pain, this takes longer, feels slightly less intense, and even though it’s never happened to him before, he knows what it means. 

“Sam?” Dean asks, but Sam doesn’t look at his brother, keeps looking around them. The fae’s closer, and it’s got a lock on their location. She’s coming from the northwest, and as Sam turns in that direction, his stomach sinks, because that’s exactly where the Impala’s parked on the side of the road. 

He’s not sure what they can do, even with their iron and steel, even with the protective sigils drawn on them, because the fae should have sensed them by now and stopped, and the fact that it hasn’t, that it hasn’t slowed down, that it’s still coming, means that it’s not afraid of them, doesn’t think it has anything to fear from them. It should at least have reacted to their weapons, given them a chance to run for it, but it hasn’t. Sam doesn’t know what to do. 

Another touch on his mind, but this one’s even longer, and doesn’t hurt so much as glide across the surface of his thoughts, skimming like fingers on the surface of a lake. When the touch fixates on Sam’s thoughts of Dean, of his thoughts of the two of them together, of his memories of his own gifts, their uses and permutations, Sam swallows and turns to his brother, not seeing any other way out of this. 

“Dean,” Sam says, hurriedly. “I need you to not argue with me, okay? Just say ‘I accept’ to everything I say. Please.” Dean frowns, but nods; Sam breathes a sigh of relief, says, “I pledge my richness to you.” Sam knows what that look on Dean’s face means, says, “ _Please_ ,” because he can feel the fae getting closer and he knows there won’t be any other way to make it out of here with the damned _raskovnik_ , not unless it’s feeling generous. Hoping for that would make them even more foolish than people have already called them.

“I accept,” Dean says, strangely quiet, suddenly solemn. 

Sam nods, swallows, says, “I pledge my body to you.”

Dean’s eyes widen, and he mutters, “ _Sam_ , come _on_ already.” At Sam’s mute appeal, feeling lightning crack through his head and throw him off-balance again, the touch angry this time, Dean sighs, says, “I accept.” 

“I pledge my soul to you,” Sam says. 

Dean shakes his head, tries to step back, but Sam reaches out, holds Dean by the shoulders. Dean pleads with his eyes, but finally says, “I accept.” 

Something, some feeling of freshness, whirls through Sam’s body, leaving him gasping, shaking like a leaf during a hurricane, and for the briefest of moments, his vision’s overlaid with dancing spots of white snow as everything about Dean, everything that makes Dean who and what he is, flashes through his skin. 

“I pledge my, damn, my richness to you,” Dean says, one hand grasping Sam’s chin, forcing Sam to look at him. Sam gapes, because there’s no need for Dean to do the same, none at all, and he never thought in his wildest dreams that Dean would reciprocate. He’d hoped, but Sam’s a Winchester, and he knows what it feels like to watch hope burn to death on the ceiling above him, carries the ache of a hundred lost dreams and lives in every inch of his skin. “Dude, say you accept. I know I don’t have anything, but at least I have a car you already call home, okay? You don’t even have wheels, man.” 

“I accept,” Sam says.

He sees the fae emerge from the shadow of the trees, then, tall and shining, dressed in a mantle of leaves, with brown skin and green hair, a dryad of the Seelie court; both better and worse this way. He’s captivated, drawn by her beauty, her nature and her connection to nature, and he starts to step toward her, but there are hands holding him in place, forcing his eyes away from her. 

“I pledge my body to you,” Dean says. 

Sam tilts his head, curious, because he doesn’t understand what that means and he doesn’t know how Dean can be talking to _him_ when the dryad’s standing right there, glowing. 

“It’s fair ‘n too late, lad,” she says, and her voice sounds like bells, tiny bells that ring outside and inside of Sam’s ears, bells that burrow their way to his brain and wrap around it, fall inside of his mind and shower everything about him into matching that rhythm, vibrate at the same frequency. 

He tries to step toward her, again, but is held back, again, and this time he follows the line of Dean’s hand, on his arm, around the fragile curve of Dean’s wrist, up the muscles of Dean’s arm, to the angle of Dean’s shoulder, the plane of Dean’s neck, over and across Dean’s face to eyes radiating fury and sadness.

“He’s mine,” Dean says, and when the fae starts to smile, Dean snaps, “He _pledged_ himself to me, body and soul.” 

She stops at that, tilts her head, and Sam staggers as the ringing disappears from his body, as that sense of anger comes back from before, but this time with a heady dose of curiosity. He sags in relief against Dean, entire body aching now, not just his head, and says, “Dean, I accept.” 

“My soul,” Dean says, quick and sharp. “It’s yours. Always has been.” 

“I accept,” Sam says, then quirks a smile and adds, “Be a shame to refuse it now.” 

He breathes deep, watches as Dean’s eyes fall out of focus for the slightest of moments, then focus back on Sam, wide, panicked. “Sam. It.” 

Sam’s about ready to ask what’s going on, because he has no clue, and Dean looks awful, colour draining from his face with every nanosecond that flies by, but then it’s a moot point, because Dean passes out, right there on the ground. 

Sam looks down at his brother, then up at the fae, and says, brow furrowed, confused, aching, “Oops?” 

The dryad laughs again. She stays in the shadow of the trees, but Sam can see the whites of her eyes as she looks around, takes them both in, catches sight of the basket of _raskovnik_. 

“Ye were the two in the old town, aye?” she asks, head tilted to one side. The moss under Sam’s feet shudders and twists. “Why were ye there, and what need have ye of the grass?”

“We were there to track down the _raskovnik_ , the grass,” Sam replies. “We thought it would be a good place to start, and when we saw the ghosts, we wanted to stay and lay them to rest. It’s what we do,” he adds, all ability to lie gone, stolen in the presence of this dryad.

The dryad nods, as if she’s listening and thinking, then guesses, “The grass, it’s not for ye, is’t?” 

Sam shakes his head, tells her about Baba Yaga, that she sent them to get a basketful, that once they do, she’ll help them find a way to free their father. She asks where their father’s being held, and when Sam says, “Hell,” she blinks, steps back, one hand resting on a tree. 

Her eyes gleam, and she says, “I’ll let the other take the grass ye’ve harvested, but I will take ye for my _teind_ ,” she says, voice tinkling like miniature waterfalls around Sam. “I wager milord Belial will be well pleased wi’ ye, mayhap enough to trade life for life without the _seanmhair_ gettin’ involved.” 

“You can’t,” Sam says, voice dry, all too aware of Dean at his feet, unconscious. 

“Ye think to be telling me what I can and cannot do, lad?” she asks, amused. “D’ye ken what I am?”

Sam swallows, nods once, and says, “I belong to Dean and I’ve already been touched by a demon. I’ve already been claimed by one.” 

As if saying it means something, even here, Sam’s head explodes in an agony of pain. He can’t hold back the scream that emerges from his throat, full of rage and denial, as if something inside of his mind is breaking apart under the pressure and being fixed, but not to the likeness it had before. 

“Samuel,” he hears, and forces himself to stop clutching his forehead, forces himself to stand up straight, look into yellow eyes without flinching. The fae, he sees, has stepped back, not in fear, he thinks, but to better see the events. “So careful, even now. ‘Already been claimed,’ instead of ‘belong to one.’ You couldn’t just say it, could you.” The demon almost sounds disappointed, in one sense, but then it looks down and sees Dean, curls the lips of a different body, a woman Ellen’s age, maybe, not so hard around the edges. “Ah. Still with your brother, then. I see.” 

Sam turns away from the demon and toward the fae, says, “I belong to Dean, no one else. And Dean belongs to me. We’ve already pledged. You saw part of it.” 

“Words only,” the fae says dismissively, before her eyes move to the yellow-eyed demon. She studies it, for a moment, then inclines her head, says, “Milord.” Sam had been listening, hoping for a name, but evidently she’s too smart for that. He resents it, then finds he hates himself for wasting time and energy on resentment, not worrying about Dean, still out cold. “Ye have taken this one for the claimin’? I ken the beginnings of a _ceangal_ , but nae a willing one, and I cannae help but think milord Belial outranks ye.” 

Sam watches, fascinated, as the demon snarls, but then freezes when it stops, looks at Dean and Sam with considering eyes. 

“Very well,” the demon says. “Samuel is mine, as I have the prior claim, but you can have Dean. He is not without his own,” it pauses, searching for a word, finally settles, a condescending drawl, on “charms. No doubt Belial would accept him with little issue; after all, it is our goal to seat all three of the family in the deepest circles. Such a troublesome lineage, these Winchesters.”

“Dean’s _mine_ ,” Sam hisses, glaring at the demon. His head pounds, but he doesn’t stop, goes on and says, “He pledged to me, but he has _always_ belonged to me, from the night you marked me and before, he’s been mine.” 

The fae laughs, claps her hands together, and says, with delight, “Aye, what a turn of events, what entertainment! To ye, milord, I accept with heart whole and glad for it.” The instant her words finish echoing, the trees behind Sam creak and groan, and new shoots start to grow up around Dean, start to cover his feet slowly, creeping green vines and strange curling blades of grass. “Take the _fear-falbh_ as ye will, and leave the _bràithair_ to me. If I cannae bind him, I’ll be sure to tell him ye’ve interest in his soul and dice to bargain with.” 

Sam screams again, as the ache in his head crescendos with no sign of stopping, distantly aware in some detached part of his mind that Dean’s arching as well, looks like he’s in pain, even though he’s unconscious. And then Sam’s pain stops, and he gasps, leans into the touch on his forehead that seems to be helping, until enough of the pain is gone for him to realise just who—what—he’s seeking out comfort from. Sam flinches backwards, nearly falls over, and the demon laughs.

“My children know my voice,” the demon croons. “You’re mine, Samuel, and one day you’ll even admit to it. Bring me my firebird. _Quickly_ , before I lose patience with this game and decide to tear your father limb from limb.” 

The wound on Sam’s cheek splits open, sends blood pouring out, and the demon leaves in a crack of sulfur. 

\--

Sam staggers on his feet, nearly trips over Dean, who’s waking up and looking groggy, eyes crinkled in a way that means he feels pain but can’t remember where it came from. 

“Sam?” Dean asks, eyes quickly clearing and focusing on the tear in Sam’s cheek. He pushes himself up, kicks away the vines and small beginnings of trees that had looped around his legs, his arms, his neck. Dean stands, shakes his head as if it’s filled with cotton balls, and reaches up, wipes his thumb across the split, slicking blood over his hand. Sam shivers at the touch, and Dean pauses, eyes widening. He does it again, slower, slightly harder, and when a shudder runs down Sam’s spine, Dean breathes, “Dude, I felt that.” 

“Ye pledged,” the dryad says, and when she smiles, her teeth gleam like polished bone. “Ye cannae say ye weren’t expecting the side-effects, aye? Now,” she says, turning her attention to Sam, “we’ve to bargain, I think.” 

Sam swallows, doesn’t meet Dean’s eyes as he says, “No bargain. I own his pledge, and I’m not giving that away, not ever.” 

The dryad’s smile tones down, and she steps forward, giving both of them their first true look at her, nut-brown skin calling to mind chestnuts and her hair, tangled up with twigs and leaves, young acorns. “I would nae ask ye to,” she says, softly. “I ken his pledge is worth something grand, aye? What bargain can I strike wi’ ye for it? Milord Belial will reward me highly for such a _teind_ as he and I’d be willing to share wi’ ye.” 

With Dean standing there, listening to everything with lips thin and pressed together, Sam says, simultaneously angry and hollow, “Nothing is worth his life. There’s nothing I would ever trade for it. _Nothing_.” 

“Sam,” Dean whispers, and when Sam turns to face his brother, Dean stares at him. “Jess? Mom?” 

The darkness screaming inside of Sam bursts out again, a loud rictus of noise that echoes among the trees, pained and harsh. It drives Sam to his knees, fingers scrabbling at his temples, nails leaving bloody furrows in his skin. Dean’s fighting with him, trying to get his hands away from flesh, but Sam’s out of control now, breath coming out in harsh pants and guttural screams, fighting back with teeth and hands. 

“Sam, come on,” Dean’s saying, and then Dean leaps on him, pushes Sam to the ground, and before Sam can fight back, Dean’s teeth are tearing apart Sam’s lips, tongue pressing into Sam’s mouth with no room for refusal. Sam shudders, keens, and falls still, finally, when Dean grinds his hips down into Sam’s. “Better?” Dean eventually asks, after Sam’s got his breath back. 

“Yeah,” Sam says, voice shredded, face aching. “Sorry.” 

Dean lies there a moment longer, until Sam looks at him and forces a smile onto his face, then pushes himself off and gives Sam a hand up. “Nothing to apologise for,” Dean says, and the lascivious leer he gives Sam actually makes Sam laugh. 

A crunch on the leaves to the side has them both whirling around, ready in unison to identify the threat and defend themselves from it, and Sam could almost kick himself when he sees the dryad standing there, watching them with a blank face. He’s completely forgotten about her. 

“I begin to see,” she says, and now Sam doesn’t hear any unnatural melody in her voice, just the whispering of wind through dying leaves. She moves closer, and Dean reaches down without taking his eyes off of her, rips his gun out of the mass of grass and moss covering it, and aims. Sam and the dryad, they’re watching each other, and Sam puts his hand on Dean’s wrists, pushes down. He doesn’t think Dean will let this one go, but Dean’s hands fall to his sides a moment later as he edges closer to Sam. 

The dryad steps up to Sam, reaches and touches his other cheek, the one not marked by the demon, pinprick light pressure of her fingertips and bark-rough nails. She looks at Dean, says, “I wager ye’ll be needing a blessing, then, so I give ye both mine own, so long as ye leave the town and my cousins alone.” The grass, trees, around them all swivel, back, Sam thinks, to where they’d been before the dryad had animated them. 

Her eyes fix on Sam’s and she leans forward, presses her lips against his, quick-slide of skin that feels more like leaves eating sunlight, or the cold wet of rain plunking onto and dripping off of petals. “Too many have their touch on ye,” she murmurs. “But p’raps one more will nae hurt, aye?” She leans back enough to stare at Sam, pull his mind in to hers, and he hears, as clearly as if she’s speaking, ‘ _Faerie will always be open to ye, an’ ye ken the way, for ye be one o’ us wi’out much issue. Until then, lad, dinnae fear the fire, aye?_ ’

Sam leans back as if she’d slapped him instead of speaking to him, and she gives him a tired, sad smile, before walking backwards to the trees. She reaches out and places her hand on the closest tree trunk, disappearing into it a moment later. 

Sam stares at the place she’d just been, trying to figure out if he understood what she’d said, if there hadn’t been a riddle under the too-clear words, because every legend of the fae warns against taking them at face-value, stuck as they are between demons and angels, lies and truth to spin in turn. He wonders what it means, don’t fear the fire, and as he stands there, he sees flashes of red and gold in the corners of his vision, like there’d been in the shower, like there’d been at Baba Yaga’s. He’s beginning to hate that he can’t trust what he sees with his own two eyes.

“Sam?” Dean asks, quietly, one hand on Sam’s shoulder. 

Sam swallows, tears himself out of whatever trance he’d been in, caught in his thoughts, turns to Dean, and says, “We should get going. The _raskovnik_ ’s got about two days before it dies.” 

Dean studies him, asks, “What happened while I was unconscious?” 

“Nothing,” Sam says. When Dean opens his mouth, as if to argue, Sam cuts him off and adds, “Nothing important, I swear.” He clears his mind of thoughts of the demon, as if Dean might otherwise be able to read them right off of his pupils, doesn’t think of seeing the very ground start to swallow Dean up, doesn’t think of how carefree and joyous the dryad had been in the presence of the demon, and waits. 

Dean eventually nods, but Sam can see the displeased cant of his lips, and leans forward, bumps his forehead against his brother’s. “Trust me, Dean,” he murmurs. “Please, I promise, nothing happened. Fae like to talk, you know?” 

“No, Sam,” Dean says back, just as quietly but with an edge to his words. “I don’t know. But I trust you.” He stops there, lets out a deep breath, and finally asks, as if he _has_ to know, “Do you ever think about trading me for Jess? Finding a demon or, or a fae, I guess, and.” 

Something in Sam’s chest breaks apart, and he cuts his brother off without even thinking, kissing Dean hard, the tears on his lips from earlier aggravated again, sending more blood into his mouth, into Dean’s mouth. “You’re an idiot,” he says, in between gasping kisses that feel as if they’re sucking out his soul. He’s got Dean pressed against a tree, but Dean’s hands are low on Sam’s back, digging under Sam’s shirt and into skin, fingernails carving out space and Dean’s kissing him back just as hard, just as brutally fierce. “You _fucking_ idiot. How can you even. Why would you think that?” 

“You left me,” Dean growls, hooking one leg behind Sam’s and pulling, twisting, to get Sam off-balance enough so that Sam goes down with a muttered curse, Dean falling on top of him. Dean gets in Sam’s face and snarls, “ _You left me_ and if I hadn’t come back, if I hadn’t,” before he stops himself, thrusts his tongue into Sam’s mouth, claiming, owning. “You could live without me,” Dean says, seconds or minutes later, when the force of his anger seems to have died down. “You _have_ lived without me. And I can’t. Sam, I can’t.” 

“You won’t ever have to,” Sam says. He reaches up, runs his fingers down the curve of Dean’s cheek, and says it again. “You won’t ever have to. You and me, doing what we do and shutting up about it, _together_ , right?”

Dean rolls off of Sam, lies there next to him, both of them staring up at the sky, lines of their bodies pressed together, shoulders, arms, fingers, hips, feet. “You’re such a fucking girl,” Dean finally says. 

It’s not an answer, but it is, in its own way, one Sam understands. He’s hurt Dean, he knows, but even as he knew, he hadn’t realised how deep the injury went, just how much of his brother he ripped to pieces when he left and moved to California, disappeared from the Winchester family for three years. He wants to say something, wants to tell Dean, again, for as long as it takes, as many times as it takes, that he’s not leaving now, not leaving ever again, wants to explain the specifics of the pledge to Dean, but Dean’s always been one for actions, not words, so Sam pushes himself off, brushes off the dirt and grass, and holds out one hand. 

“Come on, jerk,” he says. “We have to get the stuff to Baba Yaga and get Dad. Tick tock.” 

Dean grins, shadow in the back of his eyes, and lets Sam pull him up. “Bitch.” 

“Moron,” Sam retorts, and Dean laughs, picks up their weapons and leaves Sam to retrieve the _raskovnik_.

\--

The last vision of Grayson Roberts comes and goes in the car on the way back west. After it’s done, Sam passes out for half an hour and dreams of fire and music, the two intertwined and leading him onward, to some destination he can’t seem to reach. He wakes up with a nosebleed and the feeling of electricity coursing along every inch of his nervous system, tells Dean to keep going. 

Dean does, drives like a maniac with his hands clenched tight on the steering wheel, while Sam keeps an eye on the chest, the egg, and the basket of _raskovnik_. They pull into Olympic National Park just as the sun’s setting. This time, knowing where to find Baba Yaga’s home, they drive as far as they can without parking the Impala around a tree, then walk the rest of the way, the egg resting on the pile of _raskovnik_ , Dean carrying Koschei’s chest with two hands. Sam feels eyes watching him. 

Baba Yaga’s waiting for them on her steps, like before, but this time she smiles as soon as she sees them, smiles and claps her hands together, calls out, “Well, come on, then! Don’t just stand there gawking like idiots, come in and let me see what we’ve got.” 

Sam looks at Dean, who’s looking back, and Sam steps forward first. He holds the basket in his arms, tightly, and walks up the stairs, following Baba Yaga inside. He can feel Dean behind him, can feel the echo of Dean’s breath on the back of his neck, and when he moves to sit down on the couch, Dean mirrors his movements, seemingly without thinking about it, both of them ignoring the broom dancing its way across one side of the room. 

Baba Yaga sits down across from them, just like last time; there’s still a bowl of blue-tinged water on the table between the couch and the chair, beginning slivers of green algae growing around the edges. Sam’s eyes flick from the water to Baba Yaga, and he picks out the crow’s feet around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, lets his gaze settle on the streaks of colour in otherwise grey hair, the curve of her spine as she sits hunch-backed. She smiles at them again, shows teeth this time, and he can see that the enamel’s rotted away on most of them. 

“I’m sorry we didn’t bring you any more roses,” he says, apropos of nothing except the impression that her life, here, in Olympic National Park, is somehow worse than his and Dean’s. It’s an odd thought to have, especially with the way things have been going lately, with the way that everything in Sam’s life is changing at the same time that nothing is, but he has Dean and Baba Yaga has no one. She smiles at him, and the melancholic sadness disappears; he can’t seem to remember where the feeling came from. 

“Show me what you’ve brought,” she says, voice strong, at odds with the way her hands shake as she reaches out. “I’m sure it’ll more than make up for it.” 

Sam exchanges looks with Dean, and Dean picks up the chest from where he’d set it on the floor and lets it thump onto the table top. The water in the bowl sloshes from side to side, leaving strings of green on the sides, green tinged with red and gold. Sam shakes his head to clear his vision, and shakes it again when Dean gives him a questioning look, silently telling Dean he’s all right. Dean doesn’t look convinced, but he lets it go. 

“The chest of Koschei the Deathless,” Baba Yaga murmurs, reaching forward and running her fingers across the hammered iron straps, the Cyrillic letters. Sparks fly from the chest at her touch, green and blue flickers of light and metal that flare in the air and die on their way to the carpet, dissolving into the air. Sam watches them arc, hears something in the sight that vaguely resembles song, and blinks when he feels eyes on him. 

Baba Yaga’s watching him, eyes deep and endless, and her gaze doesn’t waver when she asks, “And the others?” 

Sam passes over the basket of _raskovnik_ and the unhatched _cikavac_ egg still nestled in the top layer of grass. She picks up the egg, lifts it to her nose and inhales, eyes closing. A smile crosses her lips, a small one, and then she opens her eyes, places the egg to one side and digs one clawed hand into the basket. Sam watches as Baba Yaga rifles through the grass and her hand emerges clutching one long blade. Baba Yaga licks up one side of the piece of grass, then down the other, and drops it into the bowl. 

He’d almost been expecting an explosion, but the blade of _raskovnik_ merely sinks to the bottom of the bowl, green pigment leaking out into the water and killing the algae. There’s a sense that something was supposed to happen but didn’t, that something is missing, and when he looks back up at Baba Yaga, she’s looking at him with narrowed, milky eyes. 

“So, you talked to both of them, then,” she murmurs. Sam can feel Dean stiffen next to him, can feel Dean turn and look, can feel the aching press of eyes on his cheek, counterpoint to the aches everywhere else, but Sam doesn’t say anything and neither does Dean. “And she let you leave without extracting a promise from you. Yet you’re back here, the both of you, so little different from before. Hm.” 

She almost sounds disappointed beneath the surprise, and Sam’s stomach sinks. “You sent us to get those things for a reason,” Sam says, voice dull. “Those things in particular.” He’s relatively sure he’s an idiot for not having seen it earlier, for not having pieced it together. “The _vila_ , the _alkonost_ , and you knew about the fae in Goshen. You knew what was going to happen.” He pauses, then asks, no regard to the injunction against questioning, “Even the demon?” 

Baba Yaga smiles, but Sam thinks it expresses more sadness than she’d been meaning to show, all judgment gone from her voice and face. “I am who I am, Samuel,” she says. Dean’s ready to say something, but Sam stops him, merely by placing his hand on Dean’s knee and squeezing. Baba Yaga sees it, and her smile turns a little happier, though the edges of her eyes are still tinged with depression. “And you are who you are, just as Dean is who Dean is. It, as Dean said, changes nothing.” 

Dean’s tense, and if Sam looks to the side, he knows what he’ll see: Dean leaning forward, lips curled back, teeth bared, as if he’s a wolf and not a human. “Sam was in pain. You knew it would happen, and you didn’t even warn us. Gave us all those fucking _clues_ but nothing useful. You’re no better than anything else we hunt.” 

That wasn’t what Sam was expecting, but Baba Yaga doesn’t show the same surprise that Sam knows is written all over his own face, doesn’t react at all to the accusations, merely shrugs. “The _gamayun_ said he needed practice. I was merely helping him prepare.”

“For what?” Dean asks, anger and exasperation mixing through his voice in equal measure. “What could possibly be worth all of that?” 

Baba Yaga smiles. A streak of her hair turns white, one tooth rots out while they’re watching, and Sam’s so focused on that, that he almost misses her reply. “The _zhar-ptitsa_ , of course.” 

Sam blinks.

\--

She tells them where to find the firebird and kicks them out of her house, tells them never to come back again on pain of death. They make it to the Impala before Dean unclenches his jaw and stops grinding his teeth, letting out a blood-curdling yell that echoes around the forest and makes Sam jump. “She had no right,” Dean growls. “No fucking right at all. I _knew_ she was nuts. Should’ve killed her right from the beginning, her and Rose and that damned demon.” 

Sam’d be amused if the sight of Dean prowling, pacing back and forth next to the car, hard angles and harder determination, wasn’t enough to catch his breath and hold it hostage. He wonders, idly, in the far corners of his mind not consumed with the ache of his gift and the breathtaking anger of his brother, how he ever thought this feeling was something else, how he ever fooled himself into believing he wasn’t in love with Dean, didn’t love Dean, how he could be so ignorant for so long. 

“…never trust a goddamned myth again, stay away from Russia, kill all their damned folklore-people, burn up all their _stupid_ fucking grass,” Dean’s saying, voice still overlaid with fury. 

Sam can’t help it—he smiles, crosses his arms and leans against the car and grins wide and free, loose, watching his brother. Dean glances up mid-sentence, keeps going, then stops three words later, pauses right where he’s at and looks back at Sam, moving in slow-motion. 

“Something funny?” Dean asks, cocking his head to one side, the scowl firmly etched into the curve of his jaw, the lines of his forehead. Sam has the irrational urge to go over and smooth out the skin, maybe leave a trail of kisses along the curve of Dean’s neck, see if that would work to calm Dean down. “Sam,” Dean says, low in warning, before stalking over and standing right in front of Sam, in Sam’s space, face inches from Sam’s own. “ _Sam_ ,” he says again, even lower. 

He doesn’t fight the urge any longer; Sam lifts one hand and curls it around the back of Dean’s neck, pulling Dean closer, and tilts his head down, nips at the skin behind Dean’s earlobe before licking the skin to take away the sting. 

He pulls back, more to trace the line of freckles over Dean’s cheekbones with his eyes than to see how his brother reacted, but Dean mutters, “Oh, no, you don’t,” and fists his hands in Sam’s hair, tugs Sam down, and bites his way into Sam’s mouth. 

The kiss starts out rough, close to brutal with the force of Dean’s anger; his lips open Sam’s mouth and his tongue fucks in hard and deep, until Sam’s not so much leaning on the Impala as using it to hold himself up. Dean seems to come back to himself when their hips grind together and Sam pants, finally breaks away, bending down and resting his forehead on Dean’s shoulder. 

“Dean,” he says, breathless and overwhelmed, trying to figure out why nothing in his body aches so long as Dean keeps touching him. Dean’s fingers dance tentative on Sam’s hips, then dart under Sam’s layers and rest on skin. Sam shudders, can’t stop his hips from moving forward, and he makes a low sound in the back of his throat when one of Dean’s hands tickles its way across to press against his jeans, palm his dick through the denim. “Dean, please.” 

“Please what?” Dean asks. 

Sam can’t tell what emotion is meant to be hidden by the normal bravado of Dean’s tone, so he looks at his brother and still can’t tell; Dean’s hiding behind a carefully crafted mask. Part of his gift rears at that, whispers at the back of his mind that he could push if he wanted, that things have progressed so far now that he could slide into Dean’s mind and read anything he wanted without Dean even knowing, but Sam bites that urge back, swallows it and buries it down deep. 

Instead, Sam keeps his eyes locked with Dean’s as his hands move, skitter their way down Dean’s body, the curve of his back and over his ass, move forward to his hipbones, sharp and hard under stretched-smooth skin, forward, until he’s mirroring Dean’s pose. Dean’s hard and doesn’t stop his hips from moving forward into Sam’s touch, and he doesn’t look away as Sam moves his fingers. Sam swallows, suddenly nervous, and fingers the button on Dean’s jeans before undoing it and pulling down the zipper, reaching in and under the boxer briefs to get his first touch of Dean’s cock. 

Dean does the same thing to Sam, and Sam shivers before he pulls Dean’s cock out and starts jerking, slow and close to amazed. Something inside, deep but new, swims through his blood as Dean echoes his movements without hesitating, without saying anything, as if they’ve been doing this for years, ever since Sam first thought about it without realising it, both of them going harder and faster, until they’re panting and sticky. 

“Fuck,” Sam breathes, and Dean snorts, raises an eyebrow. Sam feels his cheeks turn red, tucks himself back in and opens the trunk, reaches in for a t-shirt to wipe off his hands, and when he turns to offer the shirt to Dean, Dean’s right there, leans forward and kisses Sam, this time calm, close to chaste. Sam wavers on his feet when Dean moves back, taking the t-shirt with him. 

“What was that?” Dean asks, and Sam blinks at the tone Dean’s using, conversational, as if they’re talking about the rising price of gasoline or which state makes the best cherry pie. Dean rolls his eyes, throws the soiled shirt back into the trunk, and adds, “Any of it.” 

Sam gives him a lopsided smile and shrugs, bangs falling over his eyes. “You’re very, when you’re angry.” He didn’t want to say beautiful nor compelling, any adjective that Dean would either make fun of or get offended by, but there was really nothing he could think of that quickly, not when he’s still got the phantom feeling of Dean’s hand sliding around his dick. “It’s hot.” 

Dean snorts but doesn’t say anything about the pause, the missing word, instead asking, “When we,” trailing off as if he needs to steel himself to finish the question, “did you feel?” and leaves it at that. 

“Remember when we were getting the _raskovnik_?” Sam asks in return, waiting until he gets a nod and a narrow-eyed look in answer. “And you touched the slice in my cheek?” 

“You shivered,” Dean says slowly. “And I felt it.” He stops, stares at Sam, and asks, voice strangled, “Any time we touch?” 

Sam shrugs again, feeling something inside sink at his brother’s tone. “You wouldn’t feel it if you hadn’t pledged,” he replies. “It’ll probably get more intense because you did; all the stories say that a, a voluntary pledge from both people means that they’ll. It’s a sort of binding. We might even end up with a telepathic bond, or you might be able to tap into the visions. There’s no way of knowing until it happens.” 

Dean keeps staring at him, finally swallows. “You mean, any time we even _touch_ , it’s going to feel like that?” Sam nods, unable to speak, sure that Dean’s going to be horrified, going to regret everything, so when seconds pass and a broad smile crosses Dean’s face, he’s puzzled, must show it. Dean laughs, says, “Dude, this is _awesome_. If that’s what a handjob felt like, we’re going to explode when we actually fuck,” keeps laughing as Sam gapes. 

“You aren’t,” Sam starts to ask, stops, because Dean’s smile’s turned fond, amused but fond, and Sam thinks back to every other time he’s seen that exact look on Dean’s face, in glimpses and snapshots, quickly wiped away when Dean realised he was looking. It doesn’t disappear this time, though, and when Dean lifts a hand, rubs his thumb along the line of Sam’s jaw, Sam doesn’t flinch away like he had outside the laundromat, instead turning into the touch, tonguing Dean’s skin, taste of salt and sweat and emotions run high. 

“Get in the car, Sam,” Dean finally says, ruffling Sam’s hair and moving to the driver’s side. “I figure we can bail out Grace before heading to New Mexico for our damn firebird. And maybe get some pie. Colorado has good pie.” 

Sam laughs, ignores the ache in his shoulders, and falls asleep in the Impala before they’re even an hour down the road.

\--

It feels good to be out of Washington State. Sam doesn’t have anything against the place but they’ve been there for days and despite the different locations, everything still seemed the same, trees and mountains and rain in the air, too much green and blue, not enough variety. He hasn’t always felt like this, hated the constant moving when he was younger, but he’s been on the road long enough with Dean now to start getting itchy after too much time in one place. His definition of ‘too much time’ is starting to shrink. 

Even back at Stanford, he’d felt the urge every so often to just leave and go somewhere else. He’d had Jess, then, and good excuses in the form of vacations and holidays and breaks, but not needing one is even better, second only to the fact that he knows Dean’s even worse about staying in one place than he is and was probably getting ready to drive somewhere for the night, for the hell of it, before turning around and going back to finish Baba Yaga’s quests. 

It’s one more thing that he knows about Dean that used to drive him crazy but now can’t imagine life without. He knows, intellectually, that this quality, this desperate wanderlust, is more conditioning from their nomadic childhood than anything intrinsic to either of them, but somewhere between being lost by their father and losing their father, between learning about his place in the grand scheme of things and taking that grand scheme and shoving it all to hell, literally, he’s decided he doesn’t really care, and that all the angsting he’d done before Stanford was pretty much a waste of time. 

Sam’s learnt to accept his life, sure, but he’s also come to the conclusion that, not only is it not that bad, it’s something he _wants_. Now, not only does he have a life he belongs in, he has Dean as well, something he never knew he wanted but did and does, and, looking across the table of a ramshackle little diner in north-western Texas, just south of Oklahoma’s panhandle, he doesn’t know who he needs to thank or how to do it. Even with the demon, even with the other psychics and his mutating gift, he’s happy. He’s content. It’s a goddamned miracle after months and months of barely dealing, moving too fast for his thoughts to keep up. 

“Do I need to give you two a minute?” Dean asks, breaking Sam out of his thoughts. Sam flushes, raises an eyebrow, and Dean gestures to Sam and then Sam’s fork, the piece of pie that’s been waiting, just outside of Sam’s mouth, to be eaten. Dean laughs at Sam’s expression, finishes his cup of coffee, and slaps a twenty dollar bill on the table top. “We can get to Grace’s in about eight hours. How much of a hurry should we be in?” 

Sam knows Dean’s asking about sleep, whether or not Sam needs any, but Sam knows just as well that Dean’s tired even if he won’t admit it, that both of them could do with a few hours in a bed. He snorts, eats the last bite of his piece of pie, and says, “We’d better get some sleep. Thanks for dinner, _honey_. You paid, I guess I’ll put out,” and is only half joking. Dean stares, eyes wide and lips parted, and Sam grins, seeing it. 

“Brothers, huh?” their waitress asks, hip cocked in the aisle, coffee pot in her hand, affectionate smile on her face, as if they remind her of some other set of brothers. “Y’all want anythin’ to go? Drinks or more pie?”

Dean looks up at her, gives her a wide, open smile, and says, “Thank you, ma’am, but we’ll be fine. Unless you might be able to give us the name of a motel close by? My brother and I’re heading down to Dallas, but we need some sleep first.” 

She nods, gives them the name of a place down the street, “tiny lil’ rooms, but they’re clean and the mattresses aren’t lumpy,” and ushers them out of the diner with two extra pieces of pie and Styrofoam cups of sweet tea. Dean tells her he loves her and that he’ll be back to whisk her away, and she laughs, the corners of her eyes crinkling when Sam thanks her quietly and pushes his brother toward the car as she calls out, “Y’all drive safe!” 

\--

Dean gets the room while Sam’s fishing around the back of the Impala for the laptop’s extra battery; he doesn’t need it but he thought it was packed with everything else for the computer and not being able to find it irks him. He’s got the back door open, is half inside the car with his legs hanging out. Dean walks by and smacks his ass; Sam hits his head on the back of the driver’s seat and swears under his breath as the car rocks from side to side. 

“You’re an asshole!” he calls out, hearing Dean grab their bags from the trunk and giving up the search for the moment, emerging from the car to stretch and rub his head. “Did you hear me, Dean?” 

Dean jingles the keys in his hand, waves over his shoulder, says, “Yeah, yeah, asshole, got it,” and goes to the room at the end of the row, unlocks the door and leaves it open. He’s left Sam’s bag by the car, and Sam doesn’t know whether to laugh or scoff when he sees it sitting there, so he settles for picking it up, rolling his eyes, and follows Dean to the room. 

When he walks inside, his steps falter and he looks around for his brother, because there’s only one bed. Dean comes out from the bathroom with his toothbrush sticking out of his mouth and a line of toothpaste down one side of his chin; he wipes it off on the back of one hand.

“S’only room they had,” Dean says around his toothbrush, leaning against the doorframe. He sounds scarily noncommittal, but Sam’s not fooled. 

“You do realise what that means, right?” Sam asks. At Dean’s raised eyebrow, Sam says, with particular relish, “Cuddling. You won’t be able to get away.” 

Dean groans and Sam laughs, and Sam has his first taste of Dean’s cock that night before falling asleep in his brother’s arms.


	7. Sixième Partie

They don’t see any sign of demonic activity when they cross the loop and head downtown. Dean frowns, drums on the steering wheel, but they decide to wait and ask Grace if her wards are holding up and showing any sign of demons instead of driving around the city and probably not finding anything—after all, they don’t exactly know what it is they’re meant to be looking for. 

When the two Winchesters show up on her doorstep, Grace says, “It’s about damn time.” At Dean’s inquisitive look, Grace expands, says, “Missouri, guys. She’s great to have around in a crisis, but I am _not_ used to watching my language in my own home.” 

Dean snorts, mutters something about overzealous, wannabe mothers, and asks if the demons are still hanging around outside of Grace’s wards. 

“A few,” Grace says, “but once you two got close, most of ‘em scattered.” 

Sam gets goosebumps, hearing that, not sure whether to think that the demons were just watching, waiting to see if they could get to Ava before Sam, or if maybe what he is, what he can do now, scares them that much. Dean smacks him on the back of the head and brushes past Grace with a smile, intent on getting the whole story of the siege from Missouri.

“How are you?” Sam asks, once it’s just him and Grace standing there. Grace doesn’t say anything, just throws her arms around Sam and sinks into him, hugging him as if her life depends on it. He’d known that she was putting on a brave front for Dean, seems like all the psychics do, as if they can’t stand to disappoint Dean but don’t mind being painfully honest with Sam, who’s one of them, often the only person who can help them, who sees them at their weakest, who sees _all_ of them, down to the marrow of who and what they are. 

He feels echoes of her gift, now, being so close to her, echoes of her gift and others’, as if just being close to another psychic makes his own abilities hair-trigger sharp, and so when she says, “Surviving,” he knows she’s not making light of the situation. 

Sam pulls back, moves a curl of her hair behind her ears, and looks at her, says, “Tell me,” in a tone of voice that no one, to his knowledge or in his memory, has ever been able to resist. 

She tells him, right there on her doorstep in the middle of downtown Dallas, door half-closed behind her, people passing by and calling out to her in a mixture of English and Spanish. She’d been able to handle Missouri, able to handle the siege with little trouble and Missouri’s help, and if that had been the end of it, she wouldn’t be close to tears. 

“It’s just, she’s insane, Sam,” Grace whispers, as if she’s admitting something about herself, not Ava. “She hasn’t gotten out of bed since Missouri tucked her in, just gets up and goes to the bathroom and then goes right back to bed. She’s. She talks to herself, and she stares at the ceiling, and sometimes she starts laughing for no reason at all. She won’t. Sometimes she screams, sometimes its just talking, but Sam, she’s not, she’s.” 

He pulls her close again, murmuring nonsense words and stroking her hair until she’s calmed down, stopped shaking. “You go and help Missouri fill Dean in,” he says, once she’s stepped back, squared herself. “I’m gonna go see Ava.” 

Grace opens her voice as if to argue, but she must see something in his face, his stance, his eyes, and just nods. “She’s upstairs in the guest room. Sam.” 

“Go talk to Dean,” Sam says, interrupting her, and waits until Grace has disappeared through the doorway into the kitchen before he goes upstairs. 

\--

Ava’s sleeping when Sam sits down in the chair next to her bed, taking in but otherwise ignoring the air mattress on the floor; she looks as peaceful as she had back in Lawrence, but he can see that the scrape along her collarbone isn’t healing. He lifts a hand to the wound on his cheek, feels it pulse in time with the rhythm of her wound, and swallows, reaches down and runs his fingers along the curve of her cheek. 

She stirs, murmurs something, opens her eyes, and starts to scream. Sam slips from the chair to the bed, lays down next to her and pulls her into him, curves himself around her and pets her as if she’s a frightened animal, tells her, “It’s all right, Ava. I’m here. Sam’s here, okay? It’s all right.” 

Ava clings to him, fingernails digging like a thousand needles into his skin, and her screams settle into disjointed mutterings, the two of them rocking back and forth, cocooned in a litany of words that make no sense to either of them. Sam’s head aches, sharp and insistent, just like his shoulders, and Ava pats at his cheek, leans forward and whispers, voice hoarse and ragged, not her own, “No time to hide, no hiding for Winchesters, hide and seek, see too much, don’t they, those Winchesters we’ll make our own?” 

It’s not a question. 

“You’re free from him,” Sam says, eyes fixed on hers, pleading with her. “Ava, you’re free. You’re safe. You’ll never, Ava, please.” 

Her eyes clear, a moment of lucidity, and the hand on Sam’s cheek tightens for a moment. “I’ll never be free,” she whispers, tone lilting, eyes searching his. “None of us will. Never free. Even without the visions, I’ll never be free.” 

“Ava, no,” Sam says, shaking his head, eyes wide and glistening. He remembers Ava from Lafayette, the way she paced and pleaded, the way she argued and didn’t know a thing about the supernatural, and to see her now, like this, knowing he’s responsible in part for her mental state, it kills something inside of him. “Ava, no, you are, you _are_ , I swear. You can, you can go back to Peoria, go anywhere you want and start over, Ava.” 

She laughs, and with the sound, the clarity in her expression disappears, fades back into the restrained madness Sam’s seen since they rescued her from the demon. Sam can’t help the tears that fall, seeing the slide, and she reaches up, licks salt-water off of his cheeks, before nestling her face into his chest. He strokes her hair, plants kisses on the crown of her head, and murmurs promises he’ll never be able to keep under his breath until she falls asleep, breathing evened out, body heavy and pliant on top of him. 

Sam looks up, sees Dean at the doorway, mouth tight, lips thin, and opens his mouth to ask what the problem is. Dean turns, head shaking, and goes back downstairs before Sam can voice the question. He looks down at Ava, in his arms, and sighs. 

\--

Getting Ava settled doesn’t take long, but as soon as he gets up, she starts to toss and turn, to whimper, and the only thing that calms her is Sam’s touch. He looks between her and the door, her and the door again, and eventually leans down, presses a kiss to her forehead, and says, “I’m sorry,” as quietly as he can. She starts crying in her sleep as Sam steps out of the bedroom and closes the door behind him. 

The other three are in the kitchen, lifeblood of any house. Dean’s sitting down at the table across from Missouri and Grace is perched on a countertop, feet dangling over the side. Dean’s shoulders tense when he hears Sam enter the room; he doesn’t look at Sam when Sam pulls out a chair and winces at the scraping noise it makes, metal on wood floor. Missouri, though, lets out a deep breath and says, “She need some more?” 

“Yeah,” Sam replies, fiddling with his hands before Dean pushes over his own glass of water. A nod of thanks, a sip of the liquid, cold and wet, and Sam adds, “Being with me settles her, but it makes it worse when I leave. I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” 

Missouri shakes her head, says, “You weren’t to know, Sam Winchester, so stop blaming yourself, y’hear me? Only time I see that girl anywhere near calm’s when she’s with you, and that’s small mercy in itself.” 

Sam can see Dean grimace at Missouri’s words in his peripheral vision, wants to tell Dean that he’s an idiot but doesn’t, not with Missouri watching them with narrowed eyes and Grace probably picking up on something as well, off to the side. 

“We’ve told Dean ‘bout what happened down here,” Missouri finally says, when neither Sam nor Dean says anything. “Now why don’t you two fill us in, hmm?” 

Sam feels Dean shrug more than he sees him do it, shoulders hunching up for a brief second, gets that Dean’s going to let Sam decide what, if anything, they should tell the two women. 

“We found Baba Yaga without too much trouble,” Sam begins. “She sent us on a search for a few things, and once we brought them all back to her, she told us we could find a firebird somewhere in New Mexico. Thought we’d come down here and see how you were holding up before heading over there, though we won’t stay long.” 

Missouri snorts, and Grace, feet swinging on the counter while a glass of iced tea drops beads of water into her hands, says, “If you call that ‘filling in,’ I’d hate to hear what ‘glossing over’ might mean.” She pauses, and Sam leans back in his chair, meets her eyes. “I know something happened to you guys, something big; it’s written all over the two of you, and there’s something floating in the air between you,” she adds, waving at the space between Sam and Dean. 

Sam freezes, because in all of this, he’s only ever thought about him and Dean, how he feels about Dean and what Dean says he feels about Sam, or, rather, what Dean doesn’t say and how he acts. He thinks about the pledging, how right it felt, how shocked he was when Dean turned the words back around on him, how everything between them is slotting into place like it was meant to be, and then he thinks about what everyone else would say, what Grace and Missouri would say. Like being caught in a sudden rainfall, he shudders, feeling cold slide down his back—what will their father think? 

With the other three watching him, Grace and Missouri overtly, Dean covertly, Sam’s mind races through the ramifications, every possible permutation of reaction, and decides, again, that he just doesn’t give a fuck. He has Dean now, and that’s all he wants. Still, he doesn’t know how Dean wants to handle this, whether Dean would want everyone to know or not, because it’s still incest, even if they don’t care, so Sam just shrugs, and says, “Lots of stuff happened, some of it big, some of it not. I don’t regret any of it, but talking about it, it’s hard to put everything into words.” 

Missouri leans forward, studies him, and Sam lets her. “Sam, baby,” she says, head tilted to one side, eyes narrowed in focus or shock, he’s not sure, “are you. You’re happier than I think I’ve ever seen you. Aren’t you?” 

“Yeah,” Sam says, smiling back at her. “Yeah, Missouri. I am.” 

\--

Grace cooks dinner and by the time the food’s ready, the entire house smells spicy, peppers and onions and garlic. She thumps two plates of _chorizo_ -covered nachos on the table first, along with two bowls of salsa, points and says, “Hot. Mild. Don’t get them mixed up,” before filling up a pitcher with sweet tea. 

Dean digs into the hot salsa with a grin on his face, and Sam says, “This is _Grace_ ’s salsa, Dean. Remember what happened last time?” 

“Yeah, whatever,” Dean says, waving off Sam’s warning before shoving a salsa-laden nacho in his mouth. He chews and swallows, grins, and Sam gets to a count of seven before Dean’s eyes are wide and he’s fanning his mouth, reaching for his glass of tea. Sam snickers, Dean flicks him off and kicks him under the table, and Sam finds himself leaning to kiss the heat out of Dean’s mouth. 

He remembers where he is before he can, though, and smoothly changes trajectory, getting his lips close to Dean’s ear and saying, loud enough for Missouri to hear, “You? Are an idiot.” Sam leans back, smacks Dean on the back of the head, and Dean turns to look at him, eyes burning as if he knows what Sam was going to do. Sam sees promise and regret both underneath the playful expression, promise that Sam’s going to pay for that and regret that it won’t, _can’t_ , happen right away. 

Grace snorts from where she’s bustling around by the oven, and Missouri looks between the two of them as if she knows she’s missing something but can’t quite put her finger on what it might be. Sam and Dean both smile at her, easy and innocent, and reach for the same nacho at the same time, fingers brushing before they snicker and grab different ones, Dean going for the hot salsa again, Sam for the mild, indulgent expression on his face. 

He’s just finishing chewing when he hears Missouri whisper, “Lord-a-mercy,” and frowns, turns around to see what has her so shocked. Sam jumps up when he sees Ava at the doorway, looking in on them with a lost air hanging around her. He goes over to her and helps her to a chair, not needing to look at Dean to see that Dean isn’t smiling any more. 

Sam handles her gently while Grace and Missouri watch, trying not to look as stunned as they must feel, while Dean doesn’t look at him at all, attacks his chicken tacos with near-angry fervour. Sam tries to get Ava to eat something, warm, plain tortillas and cheesy quesadillas, nothing with meat, nothing spicy, and she takes food from his hand like a child might, not eating anything otherwise. She keeps her eyes fixed on him, and he can see her struggling, trying to keep calm enough to stay down here, though she flinches when Grace moves, when Missouri speaks. 

It’s not until Dean sets his empty glass down that her eyes slide away from Sam, and she lets her gaze settle on Dean for a handful of seconds before studying the space between them, then bringing her attention back to Sam. 

Sam holds his breath, Dean’s not moving, and Ava tilts her head to one side, says, “Pledge-marks, marked and married. One level of fae, one level of demon, and broken sight, can’t see, see too much, see to play the game and play it well, high stakes.” 

Sam exhales, leans forward and asks, “Ava? What do you mean, broken sight?” Dean, on the other side of him, watches closely, cheeks gone pale. 

Ava smiles, reaches up and pats Sam’s shoulder, movement too big, clumsy. “You know, you know. Breaking apart, everything, isn’t it, breaking and falling and nothing makes sense.” She almost sounds mournful as she says it again, “Nothing makes sense. But you know what does, and that’s all you need, pledged and marked, bound and twined, happily ever after, mm?”

“Ava,” Sam breathes, because he understands what she’s saying, even if Missouri looks puzzled and Grace just looks scared. “Even now, without your gift?”

“Taught me to tap, yellow eyes,” she says, head falling forward. “Gift gone, winds still there, taught me to tap and now it’s always there, nothing makes sense. Sight broken, not gone but in pieces, and you, Winchesters, pretty little Winchesters to bleed and pay the price, toys, playthings for his army, coming to kill you.” 

Dean stands up, chair screeching on the floor as its shoved backwards, and Ava flinches, curls in on herself. “Sam,” he says, low, forceful. “Sam, what the _hell_ is she talking about?” Ava starts crying, Missouri’s telling Dean off for his language, Dean’s arguing back, and Grace is hovering, asking whether she can get anything for Ava. 

Sam, in the middle of it all, lifts Ava’s chin and meets her eyes, the two seers—one with a gift and sanity, the other without either—communicating in a language beyond words. 

\--

He’s not sure how long they sit there, looking at each other, blinking in sync, breathing in rhythm, connected, but when they break off, when Sam leans back in his chair and Ava buries her face in her hands, the kitchen is silent. Sam’s head is pounding and the ache in his shoulders, along his collarbone, has come back with a vengeance; he lifts one hand to his mouth and starts biting absently at the skin around his fingernails. Dean slaps his hand away, gives him a pointed look, and Sam nods, swallows, clasps his hands together and fidgets. 

“What’d you find out?” Dean asks, no nonsense, straight to the point. 

“Nothing we didn’t already know,” Sam says, sighing and looking around the kitchen. “Except that something the demon did, to Ava, it means she still has visions without her gift. As if her gift made it easier to tap into and out of the psychic winds, but now, without it, she’s stuck inside a slipstream and can’t break free.” 

Missouri looks almost relieved, says, “Continual visions, overlaid on reality?” When Sam nods, says they aren’t continual so much as indecipherable from reality, she says, “We can teach her how to handle that. If I’d known, I could’ve started already.” She frowns, though, adds, “Can’t think why I _didn’t_ know, come to think of it.” 

Sam gives Missouri a forced smile, then looks up at Dean, who has his arms crossed and looks thoughtful. Sam raises an eyebrow in question, but Dean just shakes his head and says, “Your cheek’s bleeding. So’s her shoulder. Come on, I’ll get you cleaned up. We’ll let them take care of Ava.”

Dean pretty much manhandles Sam out of the kitchen, into the bathroom, and once they’re both inside, Dean closes the door and pushes Sam up against it, fury radiating out of every pore. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Sam, okay? I think I deserve the truth.” 

“What are you _talking_ about?” Sam asks, bewildered even though he thinks he knows what’s going on. “Dean.” 

“Don’t lie to me, Sam,” Dean says again, and surges forward, presses his lips against Sam’s with enough force to bruise. Sam opens his mouth willingly, eagerly, but instead of kissing him, Dean rears back and snorts in something that sounds like disgust. 

Sam sighs, waits until Dean looks angry again, as if Sam isn’t taking this seriously, and then uses his weight to flip them, so that Dean’s back is to the door, elbows cracking against the wood. “I don’t know what stupid idea you have in your head,” Sam says, as he’s dropping to his knees, undoing Dean’s belt and fly with frantically fumbling fingers, “but it’s _stupid_.” 

He leans forward, licks up one side of Dean’s cock and down the other, swirls his tongue around the head, and then leans back, says, eyes fixed on Dean’s, “Ava knows we pledged, and she’s happy for us. She knows I’m _happy_ , Dean, because you’re the one I want and you’re the one I have.” He pauses, licks his lips, and asks, hesitant, “Unless I don’t?” 

The tension seems to drain from Dean’s shoulders as Sam keeps his gaze steadily on his brother. Dean runs his fingers through Sam’s hair, doesn’t say anything but doesn’t have to, not when they’re both laid bare before the other. 

“Let me,” Sam says, before stopping, cheeks flushed with colour. “Dean, I want. Would you. Fuck me. My mouth. I.” 

“Jesus,” Dean groans, and this time the heat in his voice is hot, not cold. The hand on Sam’s head moves back, cupping his skull in broad fingers, and Dean’s hips arch forward, cock smearing pre-come across Sam’s cheek. “Sam, fuck. Open your mouth, okay? And tell me if. _Fuck_.” 

Sam opens his mouth wide and lets Dean fuck his mouth, take him fast and hard, a claim that scalds him, burns him and brands him, more than the pledge had, more than their frantic kissing after the fae left, more than the quiet exchanges of breath last night before they’d fallen asleep.

Dean comes all over Sam’s face and stands there, panting, hands tangled in Sam’s hair, until he gets his breath back. Sam doesn’t move to get up, just nuzzles Dean’s hipbone and uses his fingers to wipe the come off of his face, licks it off of his hand. Dean makes a noise at that and pulls Sam up, pushes Sam until he’s sitting on the covered toilet. 

Sam looks up at his brother, and says, quietly, “You don’t have to be jealous, Dean. There’s no reason. It’s only ever been you.”

Dean gets a washcloth, wets it and starts wiping off drying come and crusted blood, water pink when he rinses the cloth in the sink, and does it again, touch tender, careful, as he drags the flannel down Sam’s cheeks. “You had Jess,” Dean says, finally, not looking at Sam. “Grace is half infatuated with you. And you could have Ava. She loves you, I think, and you know what Missouri said, she’s better when she’s with you. You two have this, this thing, and.” 

“I love her, too,” Sam says, cutting Dean off. “But I don’t want to fuck her. She’s like a little sister, not a girlfriend, and she’ll probably never get over losing her fiancé the way she did. I’m safe, to her, because she knows I’m not interested. Grace would take either of us, you know that. And Jess.” Sam trails off, finally says, “Did you know she had the same birthday you do?” 

To anyone else, that might seem like it came from nowhere, but Dean just gives Sam a half-smile and murmurs, “How ‘bout that,” before leaning down and kissing his brother, slow and sweet and lazy, as if they have all the time in the world. 

\--

Sam sleeps in the guest bed with Ava curled up in his arms that night, and Dean claims the air mattress on the floor; Grace gives up her bed to Missouri and sleeps on the couch downstairs. The air in the house still smells of tacos, that and the underlying sense of safety, of properly working wards that hum and mark out the time in fits and starts to match the minutes. Sam dreams, first, then falls into visions, and when he and Ava wake at the same time, gasping in rhythm, Dean’s already awake, sitting at the foot of the bed, one hand on Sam’s quilt-covered feet, one on Ava’s knee. 

“Anything new?” Dean asks, and to Sam’s surprise, Ava answers before he can. 

“Barnacles,” she says firmly, eyes shining. Dean echoes the word, and when Ava doesn’t do more than nod, Dean looks at Sam. 

Sam sighs, says, “Maine. Someone who can manipulate water. He’s a commercial fisherman; I think he’s bored because the season doesn’t start for another couple months. He’s out haggling over a new boat when he falls in the water and it spits him back out onto land.” Dean grimaces, and Sam says, “We’ll leave in the morning.” 

Dean nods, goes back to his mattress, and starts snoring a couple minutes later. Sam meets Ava’s eyes, and neither of them says anything about the flood of fire that flickered on the edges of their vision, what it might mean. 

“You know,” Ava says, minutes or hours later, breathing the words into his ear like rain. “You know what it means.” 

“I _think_ I know,” Sam murmurs back, correcting her, pulling her closer, soft and giving against the tight planes of his own body. 

She reaches up, curls one hand around his neck and snuggles in even deeper, as if she’s trying to climb inside of him, as if she’s trying to make them one person in the physical, like his gift can make them one person in the psychic. 

“You know,” she says again. 

Dean tosses on the air mattress; Ava falls asleep. Sam shivers. 

\--

Grace sends them off after a big breakfast, pancakes and sausages and fresh fruit, orange juice and coffee, telling them to call if they need anything. Missouri watches them from Grace’s front step, and when Sam says goodbye, gives her a hug, she looks up at him, lips pursed. 

“I don’t know what happened up there,” she says. “You two are good at hiding things. Better than you both should be, if memory serves. Take care, Sam, and make sure your brother doesn’t do anything foolish, you hear me?” 

Sam laughs, the sound echoing down the block, lighting it up faster than the pre-dawn sun peeking around the edges of buildings. “I’m not even going to try and promise,” he says, grinning. “Dean, doing something foolish? I’d be trying to stop him for the rest of my life, and I doubt that’d be long enough to get anything done.” He leans down, kisses her forehead, and quietly tells her to call them if anything happens.

She promises, and Sam looks up at the bedroom window, sees Ava plastered against the glass. He waves, blows her a kiss, and she presses her palm to the window, before he slides into the Impala, leather creaking under him, welcoming him home. He can feel her eyes watching them as they leave, imagines he can still feel her heart beating next to his, in sync, as they drive southeast, detouring ‘round McKinney Avenue and the construction in the cultural district to get on I-30, heading for Fort Worth.

\--

They drive all morning, all afternoon, and half the evening, until Dean pulls into a motel parking lot an hour and a half north of Alamogordo, in Carrizozo. The air here, unlike Washington, is dry and hot, no sense of water in the air, mountains to the west and desert all around. Dean gets out of the car and wipes off his forehead; Sam unwinds his legs and listens to the wind as Dean looks south, towards Alamogordo, towards Holloman Air Force Base and White Sands. 

“You know what else is down there?” Sam asks. When Dean looks back at him, forehead furrowed about sunglasses, Sam guesses it has more to do with Dean squinting behind his shades, sun still a couple hours from the horizon and bright, rather than any real desire to know. “The burial grounds of Atari.” 

“That some kind of tribe I’ve never heard of before?” Dean asks, scratching the back of his head. “One of those days I fell asleep in history? Dude, I know you rag on me, but if it wasn’t in ‘Schoolhouse Rock,’ I really don’t have a clue.”

Sam smiles, laughs, tries to pat his hair back down when the breeze is done playing with it. “Atari, the gaming system, you idiot. We tried to get Dad to buy us one, remember? Told him it would help us with our hand-eye coordination or something. Apparently they made this game that sucked, couldn’t give it away, and they brought them all out here, along with the consoles, and filled in a hole in the ground, dozed over them all and covered it with concrete. It’s out there, same as the site where they tested the first nuke,” he adds, voice softer. 

Gaming systems and nuclear bombs, fun and sadness, bad choices and inevitability, and nothing makes sense, no matter what Ava said, no matter the connections Sam can almost see. _E.T._ and Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and if he could just _think_ , if this damned ache in his head would just _stop_ , maybe he could put it together, figure it out. 

“Hey,” Dean says, voice just as soft. “Come on. Let’s get a room. We’ll find somewhere to grab dinner, get some sleep, figure out how to find the damn firebird in the morning, what do you say?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, turning away, tearing his eyes away from the south, the echoing feeling of death stuck to the area, looking at Dean, standing there, practically vibrating with life. Sam smiles, can’t help it, says it again. “Yeah, Dean. Sounds good.” 

\--

Dinner’s at a bar, a good burger and plate of fries that reminds Sam, before he starts eating, of his near-break in Washington, thinking of Chrissie. He hasn’t had the other side-effects of his power expanding that Chrissie did, or Melanie, or the dozens of other psychics he and Dean have hunted down, and that worries him, especially in combination with what happened in front of the fae. The feeling of power swelling inside of him, it should be accompanied by other things; it hasn’t been, and change, deviation like this, is never good. 

Dean kicks him under the table, the brief contact jarring Sam out of his thoughts and banishing the headache away for a split-second, until it comes back, not so bad as before. A raised eyebrow, a pointed look at Sam’s food, and Sam rolls his eyes at his brother but eats. Neither of them talk over the food or the beer that follows it, and Dean plays a couple games of pool while Sam chats with the guy behind the bar, old and friendly. 

They go back to the motel and while Dean’s putting together medicine bags, Sam’s got the laptop open and is trying to figure out where to find the firebird. Baba Yaga had only said New Mexico, but she’d also said, eyes twinkling, that they wouldn’t have a problem on _this_ quest, as opposed to the ones for her. It doesn’t make sense, because Sam’s got a list of legends attributed to the firebird, has been working on it off and on, when he’s had the chance, since leaving Baba Yaga’s house the first time, and there’s not one thing on that list that will help narrow down the area. 

One thing that all the lore agrees on is that firebirds eat apples, and the majority of apple orchards in the state are up the north, by Santa Fe or Farmington, but there are apple orchards and cherry orchards scattered everywhere through the state—hard to believe, but it’s depressingly true. Some of the folktales mention pearls, as well; apparently the firebird flies around and its teardrops turn to pearls, giving peasants something to bargain with in trade for food or other necessities. New Mexico isn’t known for pearls, though, but it _is_ known for perlite, which, Sam has learned, is also spelt ‘pearlite’ and comes from the French word for pearl. The three big perlite deposits are on the west side of the White Sands range, but, again, just like the apples, perlite’s everywhere in the state. 

Firebirds don’t like massive crowds of people, though, so Sam doesn’t think they need to be looking around Albuquerque or Santa Fe. He’s not sure why he thought of the area around White Sands the instant Baba Yaga told them New Mexico, but he did, and Dean’d thought it was good enough, even if they both hate relying on Sam’s hunches. What Dean said, back in Bellingham, how he prefers guesses to hunches, Sam more than agrees, but they didn’t have anything else to go on when they were driving away from Dallas. Alamogordo is as good as any other place, especially after a long day in the car. 

“Anything?” Dean asks, coming up, standing behind Sam, eyes glancing over spreadsheets and maps, lists and check-lists. 

“Fuck all,” Sam sighs, rubbing his forehead, leaning back and groaning when Dean’s hands start rubbing his shoulders. “The damn thing could be anywhere in the state and there’s no way of knowing. Hell, it could be in the room next door and I’d never know.” Sam pauses, saying that, and listens, head tilted to one side, but there’s the faint sound of a television and two people, man and a woman, talking over it, just loud enough to distinguish between the voices. 

Dean’s hands on his shoulders tighten, fingers digging into the invisible ache of Ava’s gunshot wounds, and Sam flinches, tenses. “I don’t think there’s a bird in the other room,” Dean says after a second of silence, fingers loosening their grip, gliding along the line of Sam’s collarbone, the hand on Sam’s right side barely touching skin. Sam still hisses, bends and twists out of Dean’s grasp, flows to his feet in a move that leaves his eyes unfocused for a split second. 

They stand there and stare at each other, Sam defensive, Dean thoughtful, until Dean finally says, “You’ve picked up Mel’s nervous habit, you’ve eaten more pie in the last week than all of last year, which must come from that Roberts dude, and you’re eating your meat a little more rare than normal. Is that from Chrissie? Sam, I thought.” 

“I know,” Sam says, cutting his brother off. “So they’ve been leaking lately. It’s not a big thing and I’ll deal with it.” 

Dean shakes his head, takes a step closer to Sam, who holds his ground and lifts his chin. “It’s not the leaking that bothers me,” Dean says, “because we pretty much figured it would happen from time to time. It’s _who_ is leaking, and how consistently. Mel’s a good kid, and if the only thing you get from Electro is a hankering for food, I can deal with that. But Chrissie, man? And, I’m sorry, but this thing with Ava has _got_ to stop.”

“Grayson just happened, all right?” Sam argues back. “It always takes a few days for it wear off and sink in, you know that. And better I bite the skin around my nails than blow shit up; it doesn’t hurt anyone and no one cares, so I don’t.”

“I care,” Dean says, and the blunt straight-forwardness of the admission makes Sam falter, stop mid-sentence. Dean’s never been one to admit anything like that; Sam had been surprised at the extent of the jealousy Dean had displayed yesterday but this is coming out of nowhere. 

He doesn’t like it, narrows his eyes, says, “What.”

Dean sighs. “Look, Sam. You can be a real idiot, you know that? I’m worried, that’s all. Chrissie was fucking insane, so excuse me if I freak out when you start acting like her, and I like Ava, don’t get me wrong, she’s a good kid, but the only reason you’re still hurting is because you’re feeling guilty about it. You’re letting it leak through. You need to stop.” He pauses, as if he’s waiting for Sam to argue, and says, “You know I’m right, Sam,” the second Sam opens his mouth.

Sam holds Dean’s gaze for a few seconds, then sags, moves and sits down on the edge of the bed, too tired to argue, unable to pull up any anger. Sam breathes, deep inhales and exhales, and he’s not surprised when Dean joins him on the bed a few seconds later, sitting down tentatively, close enough to brush his thigh against Sam’s, his arm bumping Sam’s. “It’s my fault,” Sam says. 

Dean starts to say something, but Sam reaches out, puts one hand on Dean’s thigh, starts drawing patterns with one finger on Dean’s jeans. It’s an absentminded but comforting gesture—Sam doesn’t know or even really care who’s more comforted by it—and Dean shuts up, waits. 

“If I hadn’t given up,” Sam says. “If we’d looked harder, or if I’d pushed once I figured out how.” He stops, shakes his head. “We could’ve gotten to her sooner. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.” 

“Or maybe we would’ve ended up killing her,” Dean finally says, after the silence in the room has come close to pushing Sam up and outside. “Or ended up dying ourselves. You can’t think about it like that, Sam. The ‘if’s’ll destroy you, you know that. We got her back, we’re all alive, and that’s that. We’ll all deal.” 

Sam huffs but doesn’t argue, and, deep down, he doesn’t disagree. He knows he should, but he’s tired and his head aches beyond thought of what they need to do and where they’re at. He turns, puts his forehead on Dean’s shoulder, lets his older brother hold him up. Sam’s been strong, he’s been doing his best, and he’s kept Dean focused since they left Lawrence, which has been a more ridiculously impossible task with everything that's happened than he'd originally thought it would be. He’s tired, his head aches, and Dean’s warm, solid under his head; Sam can let go now, finally. 

“We’ll get some sleep,” Dean says, voice rough with something Sam’s too exhausted to puzzle out. “Maybe things’ll make more sense in the morning.” 

“Yeah,” Sam murmurs, and hardly opens his eyes as he gets ready for bed and then collapses on the mattress, waiting for Dean to join him and pull him close before he actually falls asleep. 

\--

Sam dreams of fire and wakes up in the early hours of twilight, not quite dawn yet, feeling as if his skin is on fire. He slips out of Dean’s grasp and stands up, looks out of the window at the desert, the mountains in the near distance, stars and creeping fingers of sunlight just beginning to move. It feels surreal, like the fire made more sense, which makes him swallow, lips dry and cracking, and turn back to Dean, who’s awake and watching him, green eyes glinting in the darkness. Flames crackle in the edges of Sam’s sight. 

“I think I know how to find the firebird,” Sam says, and looks back out the window, wrapping his arms around himself. 

Dean doesn’t say anything, but he sighs a few minutes later, gets out of bed as well. Sam hears the bedsprings creak, then the thump of Dean’s bare feet on the floor, and Dean’s at his side right after, scratching at his belly, yawning. 

“I don’t s’pose you’ll be able to get back to sleep,” Dean half-asks. Sam makes a noise of agreement, and then Dean says, “And I bet this isn’t the right time to suggest experimenting with the binding.” 

Sam looks at Dean blankly, pulling his eyes away from the glints of red and gold, yellow and orange, he can see showering the horizon in a light mist. “Experimenting?” he asks, but his tone’s distant, he knows; he can’t help it. He feels fey, almost, like he doesn’t belong here, like this, like he should be thinking about what the dryad told him, or what the demon’s been saying: it’s clear that Sam isn’t fully human, it’s clear he’s meant to be something else, maybe even something _more_. 

The rush of blood the pours through his body when Dean says, too casually, “Y’know. Sex,” makes him reconsider, though. He’s only ever felt at home with Dean, and Dean doesn’t care what he can do, what he is. He’s always just _Sam_ to Dean. It’s freeing, in a sense, and binding in another, and he doesn’t chafe, either way.

“Not right now,” Sam says, and he’s as surprised at his tone, regretful, apologetic, as Dean seems to be, turning to look at him. 

“There’s never going to be a good time,” Dean says, still watching him. 

He’s right, Sam knows it; when they get the firebird and make the trade, they’ll have their father back. He might not stay with them, but it won’t just be the two of them anymore, and despite everything, how well he knows Dean, Sam’s just not sure how Dean’s going to react when their father’s walking the earth again, whether he’ll resume the good soldier persona or not. 

What they have now, the two of them, Sam doesn’t know how John will react to it, whether he’ll think it was worth it, whether he’ll get them to try and break the pledge, whether he’ll realise that Sam’s still in love with his older brother, always has been. Fire flickers in the distance, and Sam shakes his head. They’ll deal with that when they have to. 

“I know,” Sam says. “Come on. We have to get going.”

\--

They leave the motel once there’s more light on the horizon but before true sunrise. The shadow of the Impala is a barely defined shape keeping time on the sand next to the road. Dust clouds up behind them, follows them, and Sam’s looking out of the front window with narrowed eyes, focusing. Dean’s grumbling, muttering about having to get dressed before a shower, before he can even have coffee, but Sam knows it’s just meant to relax them both, because Dean’s wired and hyped, ready to find the firebird and summon the demon. 

They drive for an hour and a half before Sam says, “Stop,” and the Impala screeches to a halt right there in the middle of the lane. Another car, passing them from the other direction, honks, but keeps going. “Here,” Sam says, and his eyes scatter across the scene before them, empty space and no other people for miles, save the car leaving their view. 

“Here?” Dean asks, in echo, but he doesn’t sound as if he doubts Sam, just that he’d prefer it to be somewhere else, maybe somewhere with coffee and good water pressure, pancakes or donuts at the very least. Sam grins, turns and sticks his tongue out at Dean, who scoffs and smacks Sam on the shoulder. “I don’t know if you noticed, geekboy,” Dean says. 

“I meant, here’s where we leave the car,” Sam says, before Dean can point out the obvious. “We have to go that way,” and he gestures left. Dean groans, leans down and rests his face on the steering wheel, asks a muffled question. “I’ll know when we get there,” Sam says, matter-of-factly, studiously ignoring another groan. 

He gets out of the Impala, goes to the trunk and pulls up the false bottom, stares contemplatively at the weapons. Dean joins him a minute later, asks, “Anything special you think we’re gonna need?” 

“I don’t know,” Sam says, staring at the tranquiliser darts they had been planning to use on the _alkonost_ , feeling saltwater bead at his temples, start to gather on the curve of his neck, under his hair. He arches slightly, hears his back pop, muscles rippling in sore and tired waves. “I don’t think we’ll need any of it.” He feels more than sees Dean’s expression, and shrugs one shoulder. “Baba Yaga said we wouldn’t have any trouble.” 

Dean reaches in and picks out a gun anyway, loads it with iron rounds, picks up another and fills it with rock-salt, stuffs extra ammunition in his pockets. He’s obviously not taking any chances, not that Sam thought he would, so Sam picks up his Beretta, makes sure it’s loaded, stuffs it in the back of his jeans, wondering how long it’ll take for the metal to plaster against his skin, held tight by sweat and tension. Sam shakes his head, tries to banish the thought, and curls his palm around the handle of his favourite knife, lets Dean close the trunk. 

“You said west?” Dean asks, both of them shifting, regrouping now that they’re armed, turning to stare out into the desert. It’s not doubt making Dean ask the question, Sam knows that, just like he knows that if Dean had said the same thing, he’d be asking as well. Still, he rankles, steps forward. “Guess that’s a yes,” Dean mutters, and, in some abstracted and inverse mirror of their walk through Olympia National Park, they set off. 

\--

They walk for an hour, tramping across sand and over weeds, neither of them talking. Sam’s got his eyes half-closed, not so much to keep out the brilliant glare, but to follow the strange glimpses of fire he’s seeing flicker every so often, like sunlight off of mirrors. Dean’s at his side, gun cocked and ready to fire in one hand, and Sam smiles wryly about half an hour away from the road, because no one else would be able to see how nervous Dean is, wouldn’t understand how tight Dean’s holding his gun, the way Dean won’t let him get more than an arm’s-length away, the sharp, scalding glances Dean’s giving him in between scanning the horizon and looking behind them. 

When they’ve covered a good amount of ground, mostly in a straight line away from the Impala, Sam stops. He turns in a complete circle, sees fire flood the desert like water all around him, every angle, and can’t help the sudden attack of panic. He thinks back to all of the little flash-images of fire he’s been seeing, from the very first day they started hunting psychics, growing in frequency lately, on this mission for the demon, and hopes he’s put it all together the right way, hopes this isn’t some variation on a trap, hopes Ava was right and that he does _know_ , that he isn’t just guessing. 

“Here,” Sam says, before shielding his eyes and tilting his head up to the sky. A red, cloudless expanse stares back at him, threatening to swallow him whole. Dean’s standing next to him, so close that he feels every time Dean breathes, imagines he can feel Dean’s blood rushing through out of Dean and into his own body, back and forth, deeper than life, into something older. 

Sam blinks and wavers on his feet, and when he looks at his brother, Dean’s got the same worried expression on his face that Sam always sees when Dean’s looking at him, watching him. “We have to wait,” Sam says, gesturing at the sky. His head aches, he feels light-headed, and all he can see, apart from Dean, is fire. “Until noon, I think. Sun at the highest point.”

“That’s not for hours,” Dean says slowly. 

Sam shrugs, sits down on the sand. “Just a few. But I think we had to be here.” 

Dean shakes his head, says, “Fuck’s sake, Sam. You _think_ we had to be here this early? We could’ve slept in, gotten breakfast, damn, even _showered_?” 

The shower would’ve been nice, but Sam can’t think of that, dazzled and worn out by the dancing flames, so he reaches up and tugs on Dean’s arm, pulls Dean down and then pokes and prods his brother until he’s satisfied, laying down and putting his head in Dean’s lap, facing Dean’s cock. 

“Would’ve been nicer in a bed,” Dean mutters, but he runs one hand through Sam’s hair, the other still holding tight onto the gun, to take the sting out of his words. 

“S’too bright,” Sam says. Distantly, he thinks he sounds drunk, or like he might’ve on the way to Okanogan County, after his all-nighter and reliving the memories of the psychics he’s helped. “The sun and the fire, s’too bright,” and he falls into a vision as Dean’s asking him what fire, what’s going on. 

\--

Sam doesn’t remember getting up, doesn’t remember moving, but when he opens his eyes, the desert around him has changed and he’s holding a knife in one hand, the palm of his other hand split open and sluggishly bleeding, his head pounding out an answering rumble to every thunderstorm that ever existed. He freezes, swallows, then looks up, around, for Dean. He doesn’t see him at first, but then Sam hears a ragged cry echo off of the rivers of sand, whirls and tries to place where it’s coming from. 

“Dean?” he calls out, choking on his brother’s name, coughing to clear his throat and trying again. “ _Dean_?”

“Stay where you are!” Dean calls back, and Sam turns again, sees Dean running for him. “Sam, stay there!” 

Not knowing where ‘there’ is, Sam nods, yells out that he will, and turns his attention to his hand. He wipes the knife off on the bottom of his t-shirt, tucks it into his jeans, then rips a section of his shirt off, uses it to dab at the blood, sees that it’s already slowing down, nearly clotted, and wraps the cloth around his hand and ties it off in a knot. 

By the time he’s done with that, Dean’s there, panting, pale under his freckled tan, skin starting to turn more pink than brown under the sun, hands all over Sam’s face, shoulders, neck, chest, asking questions that Sam doesn’t know the answers to. “Are you okay? What happened? What _was_ that? What happened to your hand?” 

“I think I cut it,” Sam says, answering the last question first; it’s the only one he knows how to answer. “My knife, it was, and there. I think I cut it.” Dean peers under the bandaging, clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, and presses even closer to Sam. “I cleaned it off,” Sam says, and when Dean looks at him blankly, he adds, “My knife. I cleaned it off. So it won’t, won’t.” 

He can’t stand the look in Dean’s eyes, pity and fear and confusion, lurches backwards out of Dean’s hold, turns away. “I don’t know what happened,” he says. “I had a vision, and then there was fire, and I woke up here. I hate this.” It’s the first time he’s ever come out and just _said_ it, and it feels good, feels like the private confession of a dirty secret, so he says it again. “I hate this. I hate what I am. I don’t know what’s happening to me, and I’m not even _human_ anymore, am I?” 

“You told Missouri you were happy,” Dean says. He hasn’t made a move to turn Sam back around, or get closer to Sam. “You told _me_ you were happy. Were you. Were you lying? Sammy?” 

Sam exhales, turns back around. He stares at Dean, takes in every aspect of his brother, what he can see and what he can sense, what his eyes are telling him and what his gift is telling him. With more honesty than he’s ever mustered in his life, he says, “You are the only thing that has ever made sense to me.” 

It’s not an answer, not really, but they don’t need to answer each other’s questions to _answer_ them; in some strange way, probably thanks to the way they were raised, watching each other’s backs, breathing skin-to-skin, and the way they’ve been living ever since Stanford, more so the past year, they’ve never really had to. 

Dean knows what Sam means, has to, must, with the way that colour slowly bleeds back into his cheeks, the way he steps forward and puts one hand on Sam’s hip, the other tangled and knotted in Sam’s hair, tugging Sam’s head down. His lips are dry and cracked against Sam’s, sticking and splitting into blood, warm and metallic, but his mouth is wet, the curve at the small of his back damp with sweat under Sam’s hand. 

“Dean,” Sam says, bending, mouthing at Dean’s jaw. “Dean, please.” 

At first, Dean kisses back, makes approving noises and tugs Sam closer, aligning their hips, grinding them together, but then his watch beeps, and he freezes under Sam’s teeth. “Sam,” he says, fingers tightening in Sam’s hair, pulling harder than comfort into pain, then loosening, pushing Sam away. Sam fights, fights to stay close, but Dean eventually says, “ _Sam_ ,” and Sam realises that Dean’s trying to tell him something. 

He stops fighting, relaxes and lets Dean turn him around, and then he’s inordinately glad that Dean’s hands are still on him, because he feels as if he’s going to pass out. 

The _zhar-ptitsa_ , the firebird, gleaming molten in the sun, shimmers and sparkles, waves of heat rising from its feathers, as it stands there and watches them. 

\--

Sam steps forward, can’t figure out why he’s not getting anywhere until he feels Dean yank him back. “Let me,” Sam says, but Dean gets in front of Sam, stands between him and the firebird. “Dean, come on,” he argues, but Dean shakes his head and he’s wearing that implacable face that means he isn’t going to budge on this one, not at all. 

“It could be a trap,” Dean says, and then, “Stay here.” 

Dean lets go, leans forward and presses a bruising kiss to Sam’s lips, then walks toward the firebird. He gets about twenty steps away from it before it skips backwards, head cocked and looking around Dean at Sam. Sam frowns, starts walking, and Dean tells him to hold still, stay back. Sam ignores him, elbows Dean out of the way, and the firebird lets him get closer, staying still until Dean joins him, at which point it jumps backwards again. 

“Fucking stupid bird,” Dean says, though there’s no anger in his voice. He huffs, says, “Let’s lasso it, throw a fucking collar on the damn thing. We’ll work it out later.” 

“No,” Sam says. “No, we can’t do that. Just let me try,” and stops talking. He takes one step forward and when the firebird locks eyes with him, Sam pushes outwards with his gift and tumbles into the firebird’s mind, hearing his brother shout, the sound a distant roar of waves. 

\--

He’s never tried pushing his way into a non-human mind before, never tried any mind that doesn’t possess a shred of psychic ability except for Dean’s, a mind he knows so intimately it might as well be his own. The firebird’s mind, though, is so foreign that he flounders at first, lost and twisted in a high and soaring cylinder of flame. 

Sam can feel panic from the firebird, but also curiosity, which only grows when Sam doesn’t immediately do anything. He tries to think, to communicate, but the fire around him flares and trips across a mind as wide as the sky. 

That, though, must mean something, because the panic dies, and, with it, the deeper oranges Sam sees in the flames around him. He frowns, thinks a greeting, a question, an apology, and understands what’s happening when the fire changes colour, shape, intensity with every piece of information he’s trying to get across. 

He feels like, like if he can just have a minute to acclimate, to sink in a little deeper, he might get somewhere, but something pulls him out of the firebird’s mind. Sam stumbles as he’s slammed back into his own head, the world around him bright and disorienting with acres of blue sky, miles of colourless sand, sharp, burnt air that chokes him. 

“Fuck, Sam, what the hell’re you thinking?” Dean says, hands tight on Sam’s face. He keeps muttering things, calling Sam all manner of idiot, but stops mid-tirade when something bumps against Sam’s hand. 

Sam looks, sees the firebird standing there, head cocked, eyes fixed on him. 

“Shit,” Dean breathes, and while his brother’s staring, Sam leaps back into the firebird’s mind and gives himself over to the flames. 

\--

He blinks, smell of ash in his nostrils, and winces, finding himself staring up at a blue swath of sky that hurts. 

“Why can’t you ever fucking listen?” 

Sam turns his head, feels sand and pebbles under his ear, sees Dean sitting next to him, cross-legged. The firebird’s laying down, head in Dean’s lap, and Dean’s petting it, running fingers through feathers that glisten and gleam like streams of lava. 

“Did it work?” Sam asks, staring back up at the sky. His throat hurts and his skin feels charred; he stretches, winces, settles back into stillness. 

A moment later, the firebird’s blocking his view, looking down at him with worry. How Sam can tell that, he’s not sure, but then the bird lifts its head and sings, and it’s music, yes, but also language, language that Sam can understand—not perfectly, definitely not word-for-word, but the gists and generalities. 

“It worked,” Sam says, when the trills and warbles have stopped echoing around them. The firebird sits next to him, closes its eyes, and Sam thinks that looks like an excellent idea. “’M tired,” he mumbles, letting his eyelids fall shut as he rests one hand in the firebird’s plumage. 

A swipe of lips on his forehead, and Sam hears Dean say, as if from a great distance, “Why can’t you ever just listen to me, hmm? Get some rest, you jackass.” 

Sam mutters something back, hears Dean laugh and say something that sounds like, “I love you, too, you big, fat, girl,” and then falls asleep. 

\--

He wakes up to the sound of singing and sits up, blinking away a brief moment of dizzy vertigo. The firebird’s outside, serenading the sunset—outside because Sam’s in a tent now, one that certainly wasn’t here when he fell asleep. 

Sam crawls out, sees Dean to one side, sitting in jeans with his t-shirt sleeves rolled up to the shoulders and sunscreen slathered on his skin, beer at his feet and a can of something open, sitting lopsided on thick blankets next to a couple bags of M&Ms and chips. 

“Evening, princess,” Dean says without looking, watching the firebird, though he turns a minute later and lets his eyes trail up and down Sam’s body. “You look better. Feeling better?” 

Sam yawns, feels his jaw pop, and grimaces at the taste in his mouth. “There’s a tent,” he says, gesturing behind him. “And blankets.” 

Dean laughs, says, “No shit, Sherlock. Glad to see your eyes are still working,” though there’s a hint of something else behind his tone, something darker, not so light-hearted. Sam studies his brother, yawns again, and goes over to where Dean’s sprawled out over the sand, sits down next to him, bumps shoulder and elbow against Dean. 

“Where’d they come from?” Sam asks, sees that Dean’s left him half a can of beans, uncooked, reaches for the Doritos instead. The firebird, done with its singing, comes back over to them and delicately pecks at the M&Ms, giving a delighted warble every time it manages to eat one. 

“Impala,” Dean says, leaning into Sam. “Ivan was keeping an eye on you, so I figured I’d get the tent so your pasty ass wouldn’t burn in the sun. Easier to hike there and back than drag you.” Sam snorts at Dean’s nickname for the firebird, wonders just what Dean means about the firebird watching him, but can’t ask because Dean says, voice studiously even, “You all right?” like he doesn’t expect the answer to be anything good. 

Sam’s about to reply, tell Dean that of course he’s all right, but he remembers, now, leaving Dean in the middle of the desert, running off blindly to follow a spark of flame, slicing his hand open along the way to call the _zhar-ptitsa_ , a true Russian firebird, not a Western phoenix which might have come without the blood. He remembers the brief conversation he and Dean had, remembers sinking into the firebird’s mind, melding with it the way he’s never come close to being a part of anyone else, except, distantly and only halfway, Ava, remembers the sound of his voice, outside of him, separate from him, rising and falling in harmony with the firebird, and then waking up, being able to understand it. 

As if it can tell he’s thinking about it, the firebird places one clawed foot on Sam’s thigh, leans in close and sings something. Like before, Sam doesn’t get words, just impressions, apology, sadness, hope, mischief, and a willingness to go along with a plan that Sam created when he was soaring in that cylinder of flame in the firebird’s mind. 

Sam starts to laugh, can’t help it, and the firebird laughs in its own way, as well; notes like tripping water flood the air around them, like icicles forming from runny noses in the middle of winter, like the play of rain on the backs of bullfrogs. 

“Wanna share the joke?” Dean asks, wryly, and Sam can’t help himself. He shifts, drapes himself over Dean, and starts to kiss him, heart filled to bursting with joy so intense it almost hurts.


	8. Epilogue

Ava doesn’t move away from the window for five hours after they leave. Missouri stays in the room as well, whispering things to the girl who terrifies you. You can’t say why, but Ava makes your skin crawl; she looks at you, as if she’s heard you thinking, and you shiver at the expression in her eyes. As you go down to the laundry room, washing linens, trying to get the blood out of the towel Sam used in your bathroom last night, you wonder. 

Sam, by himself, is sort of your white knight, the one who rode in at the very minute you were about ready to kill yourself, getting prepared to dedicate the death to the Baron. Dean had wrestled the knife away, but Sam saved _you_ , danced inside of your mind and tore something out of you, barricaded up the empty space and looked at you with eyes that understood, with eyes that dried your mouth to burning. 

Sam and Dean, together, were your saviours, but Dean’s never seen inside of you like Sam. You can lie to him and he appreciates it, gives you that cocky little smile that melts your bones; you lie to Sam and he just has to look at you to make you feel ashamed. It was comforting before, having someone who knows the best and worst of you and doesn’t use it against you, doesn’t judge you, who you can tell anything, but now you’ve seen Sam with Ava. Together, they’re terrifying. 

They _fit_ , two sides of the same coin, like she brings out something in him that no one else can, something that isn’t exactly good but isn’t evil by definition, either, something that just _is_. True power, all of the strongest power on the planet and beyond, is like that—too great to be contained into one-word moralistic boxes, good and bad, light and dark. True power exists, is itself and nothing else, and you wonder if Dean understands this and sees it in the pair of seers. You think maybe this explains why Dean was so out of sorts at last night at dinner, why he can’t ever seem to look at Ava, either, why he’s so protective of Sam when Ava’s around. 

\--

Missouri comes down when you’re back in the kitchen, making up new mojo bags to bury along the loop, hold up your wards. She tells you not to worry about Sam and Dean and it startles you, reminds you that this woman, so large a presence in your house, has known them longer than you have, knew them even before Sam awakened to his gift. It seems strange to think that there was a before.

Missouri’s known them the longest of the three of you, but you always forget that Ava’s known them longer than you, as well. You think of her as a child, sometimes, despite the way she looks at you. Something in her eyes makes you think she wants to forget she ever met them, but you also think it has more to do with why and how she knows the Winchesters than anything else. The way she and Sam looked at each other, last night, and fell so easily into that trance-state, the way Sam turned around and looked up at her before he got into the car with Dean and left, it pokes you into admitting that maybe there’s something there, beyond just the psychic abilities. 

You wonder how Dean feels about that.

“Don’t you worry ‘bout them Winchesters,” Missouri says, laying a hand on your shoulder. “They take care of each other.” 

Surprised at the touch and the words both, you drop the vials of menstrual blood and animal bones you’d been holding for far too long, fingerprints leaving fog on the glass. They bounce on the floor and one rolls, hits the edge of the oven, breaks. There’s a sudden smell of blood and dust, the sudden tinkling of glass shards against cat-bone, and the pattern, as it spreads out, pulls you in, spins you around, leaves you charred and gasping for breath. 

“Fire,” you say. You’re not precognitive and you don’t have visions, but you _know_ fire, inside and out, and you trust the folk-magic your family brought with them from Haiti one hundred years ago, passed down from mother to daughter ever since. You look up, eyes wide, and stare at Missouri. “ _Fire_ , Missouri. What does it mean?”

\--.--.--

Once Sam feels steady enough to walk, they pack everything up, head back towards the Impala, firebird tripping along behind them, nosing every once in a while at the bag of M&Ms sticking out of Dean’s pocket. Dean grumbles every time he feels it happen, but when the firebird moves up to walk between them, Dean reaches down and curls his fingers in the feathers while Sam’s content to listen, to breathe. 

It’s not a long walk, even loaded down with blankets and the tent, and they make it quickly. Dean only speaks once, asks, “Next step?” 

Sam thinks, takes the time to phrase his reply, and finally gives up, says, “I’m the only thing we need. The when’s up to you, but better sooner than later.” 

The firebird trills a series of notes, and Sam laughs, the sound wide and free, flowing out across the desert in never-ending waves of sound, nothing to bounce off of, no way of returning to them. Dean looks over as if he’s going to ask, but something must stop him, because he doesn’t. 

Sam reaches over, steals an M&M out of the bag, fingers rooting around in Dean’s back pocket longer than strictly necessary. The chocolate’s been half-melted by the heat, and Dean’s watching as Sam squishes the piece of candy between his index finger and his thumb. Sam licks his thumb clean, then offers his finger to Dean. 

Dean tilts his head. His eyes glitter in the sunlight, and the firebird sings at them, amused and laughing. “Yeah, well,” Dean mutters, “unlike everyone else here, I _am_ only human.” 

Sam freezes but Dean’s watching him, and Sam realises that, although Dean sounds grumpy, his brother’s testing him, joking with him. Sam grins, loose and easy, and says, “Bite me, jerk.” 

He’s not at all surprised when Dean leans down, starts sucking on Sam’s finger, and, once the chocolate’s gone, clamps his teeth into the skin. 

Dean’s teeth are very sharp. 

\--

It’s not until they’re back at the motel, firebird nesting in a pile of hot sand next to the building, that Dean sits down on the edge of the bed, nods his head at the chair, and says, “Tell me why we can’t collar it. I know you have a reason because even _you_ aren’t that stupid.” 

Sam follows instructions, sits and sprawls, seeing Dean’s eyes flicker as they move down his body and back up, almost too quickly to see. “There’s an old legend about the firebird,” he starts to say. “They say that the feathers bring luck, but whoever puts a collar on the bird itself is brought to ruin. Binding it brings about destruction for the captor.” Dean pales, and Sam hurries on, says, “But we didn’t. Don’t you see, Dean? It’s still free to do whatever it wants. It can’t hurt us, because we haven’t tried to do anything to it.” 

“The demon,” Dean breathes. “It’s going to try and.” He stops, looks at Sam with wide eyes, sunburnt cheeks. “How long have you been planning this?” 

“Since the beginning,” Sam answers, lifting his chin slightly. 

Dean shakes his head, and in the silence, Sam can hear the firebird humming as it goes to sleep. 

“Sometimes I wonder about you,” Dean says. 

Sam studies his brother, tries to figure out how he’s supposed to take that, and admits that maybe Dean has a point. Sam wonders about himself enough, and he knows that Dean worries about him, knows that he gives Dean enough reason to. Sam smiles, looks down and fidgets with his hands. 

“Only sometimes?” he asks, and Dean laughs. The sound is soothing. 

\--

Dean goes out to get some food, leaves Sam in the motel with the firebird outside and a promise to not summon the demon, not yet. Sam doesn’t have any intention of doing so, tells Dean as much, though Dean drives off with a look of intent disbelief on his face, as if he isn't taking Sam’s word at face value. Sam thinks he should be hurt by that, but he’s not; the demon wants him, even _likes_ him, and it’s come too many times before without being called. Though it won’t help, Sam lays down an extra layer of salt along the door and windows, double checks the lock, then goes into the bathroom. 

He starts the water for a shower, lets it run as he stares at himself in the mirror, poking and prodding at his face as if it doesn’t belong to him, as if he hasn’t seen it before. Unlike Dean, Sam doesn’t burn; the sun he’d gotten out there in no-man’s-land has sunk into his skin, leaving him with a deep, glowing tan, and his eyes are gleaming, almost as if there are flames dancing behind the pupils. The tear along his cheek must have split open in the desert because the scab is fresh and sand clings to it, mixed in with the blood. Sam traces his finger over it, feels the back of his head throb in time, doesn’t feel any echo in his shoulders or along his collarbone. He almost doesn’t recognise himself.

When he gets into the shower, the water is cool, sluicing across the planes of his body, running over sweat and dirt and washing them down the drain. He cleans his hair, rinses out the empty-smelling shampoo, and leans back, lets the water curl in channels and rivulets over and down his face. Sam runs fingers over his scalp, ducks his head, and stands there, hands braced on the wall, eyes closed. 

So hard to think that it’s almost done.

\--

They eat, and then Dean takes a shower while Sam crawls into bed, pulling the sheets out from where they’re tucked under the mattress so that his feet won’t be covered up. The firebird’s outside, there’s a gun under Dean’s pillow and a knife under Sam’s, and when Dean finally comes to bed, he’s naked. Sam looks, interest and exhaustion warring for dominance, but Dean runs a hand along the line of Sam’s spine and tells him to sleep. 

They spend the night back to back, hands curled around their weapons, only half-asleep and ready to react to the slightest noise. Sam dreams of fire and wakes up covered in sweat.

\--.--.--

It’s anticlimactic in the end. They go back out into the desert, away from people, the firebird with them, as if it’s a beloved pet, not a bargaining chip. Dean’s holding a crucifix in one hand and a gun in the other, not the Colt, nor anything that’s been blessed, but the bullets are salt and sage, mixed together in a silver bowl and fused together with incensed heat, a recipe that’s stalled, though not dissipated, demons before. 

Sam gently rips off the scab on his cheek, and when the blood’s welling to the surface, threatening to drip out and run down his skin, he remembers what it felt like in Goshen, calling ghosts, and twists it somehow. There’s a sudden flash-flood of agony through Sam’s head and then a crack behind them, lightning-sharp. He and Dean turn in sync, see the demon with a person at its feet, on the ground and curled around himself, clothed in bloodstained rags. Dean starts to take a step forward, but stops. 

“Winchesters,” the demon purrs. “Still together, I see? Sammy, you could’ve made a good bargain; your brother’s soul’s worth a pretty penny these days, to the right bidder. The fae wasn’t able to convince you to give Dean up?” 

“Nothing can,” Sam says. 

The demon laughs, the sound sick and diseased, and the firebird shrieks in challenge, its own song healing, gracious. Sam takes his eyes off of the demon, looks down and meets the firebird’s gaze, silently asking it if it wants to go through with the plan. Even now, this close to being done, to having their father back, Sam doesn’t want to subject anything to the demon unless it’s out of free will. 

The firebird sings agreement, and Sam curls his hand in its plumage. 

“We’ve brought you your firebird,” Dean says, voice taut. “Give us our father.” 

A smile on the demon’s face, slow and sensuous, makes Sam’s skin crawl. “You want him, then come and get him, boys.” 

Sam looks at his brother, and the three of them, two Winchesters and a _zhar-ptitsa_ , start moving forward. When they’ve closed half the distance, Sam takes his eyes off of the demon and looks down at the person, tracing the curve of the spine, the rope burns on the wrists and ankles, around the throat, the singed clothing and the shorn head, skull covered in stubble, runes and sigils carved into the flesh, scarred-over brands. 

Dean starts to growl, bringing to Sam’s mind the near wolf-like tone Dean used at Baba Yaga’s, the second time, and the firebird seems to feel Sam’s trepidation because it rubs its head along Dean’s leg, soothing. Dean reaches down, absently, and scratches the firebird’s head. 

“No collar and leash?” the demon asks, sounds like it’s honestly curious. 

Sam resists the urge to look at his brother, and instead gets close enough to kneel next down to the person, Dean covering him. He turns the face, gets a good look, and nods once; Dean snarls. 

The demon laughs, drags its foot across the prone form of their father, and Sam flinches. “You could’ve saved him this suffering, Sam. You could’ve saved your brother a lot of pain, if you would’ve shot your father when he told you, or if you’d come with me when I asked. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to, now? I’d guarantee their safety.” 

Dean starts to answer, but the demon waves its hand lazily and Dean goes flying through the air, lands at an awkward angle on his back and doesn’t move again. 

“I could kill you all here, now,” the demon murmurs, leaning down, breathing the words into Sam’s hair. It bends more, and its lips trail across the curve of Sam’s ear. The demon’s tongue slips in, caressing, and Sam bites back acid and vomit. “I could kill you, and none of you could stop me. Kill your worthless brother, kill your wretch of a father, take you with me. You’re mine, Sam, and you have no power to stop me.” 

The firebird nudges Sam’s hand, placed protectively on John’s neck, cradling his father’s head, and Sam says, “We brought you the firebird, you’ve given us our father. The deal’s done.” He swallows, hearing the demon laugh again, and adds, “You’ve had your fun.” 

“Ah, the fun’s never over,” the demon replies, amused. It stands up, runs fingers through Sam’s hair, traces its mark on Sam’s cheek, and then slips a collar around the firebird’s neck, tugging at the bird. “No,” it says, almost thoughtful. “With you, your family, the fun’s never over. I’ll let you live this time, but only because I think it’ll end up being far more entertaining. Let me know if you change your mind, Sam,” it says, kissing Sam on the forehead in twisted benediction. “Someday I’ll decide you’re not worth the trouble,” it adds, before walking away with the firebird and disappearing into a shimmer of heat. 

Sam feels the absence of the demon like a vicious right-hook, shakes his head, turns his attention to his father. “Dad?” Sam asks, leaning over John, turning him and trying to guess how badly the eldest Winchester is injured. “ _Dad_?” 

John blinks, coughs, and when he’s caught his breath, asks, “ _Sam_?” like he can’t believe it. “Where’s your brother?” 

“Right here,” Dean says. Sam looks up, sees Dean limping their way, eyes on him. Sam nods and a grin threatens to break Dean’s face in half. He collapses to his knees on the other side of John, puts one hand on John’s chest and looks at Sam. “I’m here, Dad. We’re both here.”

\--.--.--

You feel it moments before Missouri starts to smile. A new balance in the world, wrongs righted, bargains upheld, the subtle flavour of a new reckoning gathering itself together. Most of all, there is happiness. 

Sam is happy.

Missouri whoops out loud, and Grace is there, in the doorway, a minute later, cheeks flushed. “What is it?” she asks, eyes sliding around yours. 

You want to tell her that everything she’s guessed is wrong, that she has no hope with either of them, that there will be a man at the _botánica_ next time she goes, buying the same herbs she needs, and that he will be entranced by her. You want to tell her that he is a good man and that she should say yes when the time comes, but your mouth is dry, your lips are stuck, and maybe that vision isn’t the true one, maybe the vision where she ends up dying in a car crash is, or the one where she meets a young woman who digs in under her faultlines is, or the one where. 

There are too many and words are so deceptive, so you turn away from her, look out of the window, lick your lips and blink back tears, because Sam is happy. 

“They got ‘im back,” Missouri says. “Most loud-minded man I’ve ever known. He hasn’t been back five seconds and he’s already going to town. They got their daddy, Grace. Just wait ‘til you get to meet him, Lord-a-mercy.”

You see Grace’s reflection in the mirror, and want to smile. She looks as terrified by the prospect as you feel. She has no reason to be, though, and you do. 

Sam is happy. That’s the important thing. Sam is happy.

\--.--.--

They’ve been telling him the story of the firebird for a couple hours, sitting in a motel room with one bed, feeding him beef and vegetable soup, plying him with cheap bourbon. They’re on the bed and he’s in the chair, been listening as best he can, but it takes a while for the words to start making sense in a mind too used to hearing screams, listening to torments and tortures, used to disassociating itself from the body it fits inside of. 

The soup is thick but strangely bland, and John can’t decide if it was made that way or if his taste-buds haven’t kicked back in yet, but he appreciates the thought either way. The alcohol burns, but the burn is pleasant compared to what he’s gotten used to, a comforting feeling that brings to mind life and pleasure, sadness and failed responsibility, pride and loss—all the things he’s only felt echoes of, since that hospital in South Dakota. 

Dean looks good, sunburnt, maybe, and tired, but good, and John’s pleased to see it though he hadn’t expected anything else. His son’s a fighter; he’s used the time John’s bought him and used it well, it seems. Sam, though, looks terrible despite the smile that lights up his face, with dark shadows under his eyes, tan on top of skin that looks as if it’s been pale and drained for too long, and he’s holding himself as if he aches, as if he’s brittle and might shatter. There’s that slice down his cheek, as well, and as much as John wants to berate Dean for not sewing it up right away, he can see the way Dean’s been taking care of Sam since they’ve been back just as much as he’s been taking care of John. 

“…And then we made the trade, and the rest you know,” Dean finishes up, before leaning back, shoulder knocking against Sam’s. John sees Sam’s fingers twitch, but Sam doesn’t seem to mind; if anything, he’s relaxed a fraction at the contact. 

“So you just _gave_ it a firebird?” John asks, throat still raw, unused to oxygen, registering the heat but not otherwise taking note of the taste of the soup, the liquor. His boys, his smart, beautiful boys, have been helping Baba Yaga? They’ve been helping the damned demon? “Dean, Sam. Those things, they bring _luck_ to whoever has them. I know you know that, and I know you aren’t stupid. You boys better damn well tell me what the hell you’ve been doing.” 

Sam and Dean exchange glances and start to laugh.

\--.--.--

_Quick now, here, now, always—  
A condition of complete simplicity  
(Costing not less than everything)  
And all shall be well and  
All manner of thing shall be well…_

\--.--.--

 

C’est fini.


End file.
